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Thornton Lockwood
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
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The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
383
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
Th o r n t o n L o c k w o o d
Quinnipiac University
[email protected]
Abstract: Aeschylus’s Persians dramatically represents the Athenian victory at Salamis
from the perspective of the Persian royal court at Susa. Although the play is in some sense
a patriotic celebration of Athenian self-government, it also functions as tragedy that generates sympathy for the suffering of its main character, Xerxes. Although scholars have argued
whether the play is primarily patriotic or tragic, I argue that it holds in tension both kinds
of elements in such a fashion as to invite its audience to reflect on the political ramifications
of Persia’s failed empire for Athens’s own nascent Delian League, which at the time of the
performance of the play was already showing hegemonic tendencies.
Keywords: Aeschylus, Persians, Imperialism, Athenian hegemony, Greek Tragedy
Aeschylus’s Persians dramatizes one of history’s greatest reversals, the Greek
defeat of the Persian army and navy of Xerxes at Salamis in 480 BCE. The
parodos of the play catalogs the “city-sacking” forces whose destiny the chorus of Persian elders and advisors claims is “conducting wars that destroy
towered walls, clashes of chariots in battle, and the uprooting of cities”
(104–5).1 The exodus, by contrast, depicts the king and chorus bewailing
the “triple-oared” (1075)—namely, the Athenian fleet, that “wall of wood”
which preserved Athens even while its acropolis was sacked.2 Between such
Unless otherwise noted, parenthetical references within the text are to the Greek line numbers in
Edith Hall, Aeschylus Persians (Oxford: Aris and Phillips, 2007). I generally follow the translation in
Persians, Seven against Thebes, Suppliants, Prometheus Bound, trans. Alan Sommerstein (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), with occasional emendation.
1
Aeschylus appears to have the Persian messenger (348–49) allude to the Delphic oracle’s enigmatic
claim that Zeus will give Athens “a wall of wood, which alone shall abide by the foeman” (Hdt. 7.141).
2
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a beginning and ending is the representation of Xerxes’s twofold attempt to
yoke together Asia and Europe, Persian and Greek. By turning sea into land
at the bridging of the Hellespont, Xerxes rashly sought to bring together
two land masses and place a yoke upon the sea itself (72), an act which the
gods themselves undo when they turn land into water (or melt the ice on the
river Strymon), drowning the Persian survivors who retreated from Salamis
(495–505). According to his mother’s dream, Xerxes also naively sought to
yoke together two siblings, the Greek and Persian peoples, for the betterment
of each (189–96, cf. 50)—a question of hegemony that Athens herself faced
following the liberation of Ionian cities in Anatolia in the years after Salamis.
Persians depicts the Athenian victory over Persia from the perspective of
the Persian court sitting in Susa. From the court’s perspective, the play begins
with optimistic confidence about Xerxes’s expedition against the Greeks. But
a messenger conveys the terrible news of Persia’s defeat along with a vivid
account of how the battle at Salamis unfolded. The defeat is so horrible that
the Persian queen conjures the shade of Darius so that he can offer fatherly
advice to his rash son, who finally arrives on the stage at the end of the play,
utterly defeated with quiver empty. The play closes with Xerxes and the chorus of Persian elders performing a kommos or extended lyrical chant of ritual
lamentation. The play was performed as the middle play of a tetralogy which
won first prize at the City Dionysia in 472, eight years after the sack of Athens
and the battle of Salamis. Clearly, the play was composed and produced during a time in which the Delian League (founded in 477) was beginning to
show hegemonic tendencies. As early as 480 Themistocles had indemnified,
and brought under siege, Ionian cities such as Andros and Paros for failure
to contribute to the Hellenic League, the alliance which preceded the Delian
League (Hdt. 8.111–12). In the summer of 479, Greek forces defeated the Persian army at Mycale and precipitated the liberation of the Ionian Greek cities
which would ultimately comprise the Delian League (Hdt. 9.106). Athens
took control of Greek forces from Sparta following the successful siege of
Byzantium in 478 and the Delian League conducted its first Athenian-led
campaign at Eion in 476. In the early 470s or the late 460s the Euboean city of
Carystus declined membership in the league and was subsequently besieged
and plundered; Naxos’s attempt to secede from the league resulted in the
destruction of its walls and its reduction to subject status within the league.3
For quotations from Herodotus I generally follow The History, trans. David Grene (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987).
Although the precise chronology of the events at Eion, Carystus, and Naxos is uncertain
(Thucydides 1.98 offers only the succession of events without a chronology), that they took place
3
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
385
Although Persians was performed against the backdrop of Athens’s
nascent hegemony, scholars are divided over the tragedy’s political teaching
about empire.4 At one end of the spectrum are interpretations which read the
drama as patriotic praise of Athens’s victory over Persia—in greater or lesser
degree as jingoistic or chauvinistic. At the other end of the spectrum are
interpretations which read Persians as a cautionary tale about imperialism,
the beginning of a tradition—echoed in Herodotus and Thucydides—according to which “the story of an empire is a tragedy which ends in lament.”5
There is evidence supporting interpretations on both sides of the spectrum.
Aeschylus clearly represents Salamis as a specifically Athenian victory, one
which occasions pride for its victors. At the same time, it is hard to imagine
the invocations of Persian suffering as producing no pity and fear or worries
about Athenian hegemony.
Most scholars have sought to resolve this impasse by emphasizing either
the patriotic elements or the tragic elements of the play. Instead, I would like
to argue that the tension of Persians is purposeful. As Peter Euben points
out, tragedy is different from other Athenian political institutions because of
its “theoretical” character: tragedy “enabled its citizen audience to reflect on
their lives with a generality denied them in their capacity as political actors.
Alone among the Hellenes, the Athenians possessed an institution that, in
its general rumination on the human condition and refusal to be partisan
or programmatic, was theoretical in nature.”6 I take such “reflection” to be
distinct from (although obviously connected to) deliberation about policy
alternatives which political actors undertake. Viewers of a tragedy are put
into the odd position of not having to make a choice even though a drama
presents them with options and actions to evaluate. No doubt, the audience’s
responses to and evaluation of elements within a tragedy will influence
how they deliberate when, for instance, in the assembly they are presented
with arguments for and against alternative policy options. But theorizing
within several years’ proximity to the performance of Persians in 472 seems clear.
Two of the more prominent interpretations are those of Thomas Harrison, Emptiness of Asia:
Aeschylus’ “Persians” and the History of the Fifth Century (London: Duckworth, 2000), 103–15, which
presents a patriotic interpretation, and David Rosenbloom, Aeschylus: Persians (London: Duckworth,
2006), 141–46, which presents a tragic interpretation.
4
Rosenbloom, Aeschylus: Persians, 95; see also J. Peter Euben, “The Battle of Salamis and the Origins
of Political Theory,” Political Theory 14 (1986): 359–90, and Kurt A. Raaflaub, “Herodotus, Political
Thought, and the Meaning of History,” Arethusa 20 (1987): 221–48.
5
6
Euben, “Battle of Salamis,” 367.
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introduces an element of reflection and even “make believe” that is simply
absent from the actual deliberations of political actors.
I would like to apply Euben’s insight to Aeschylus’s Persians and argue
that the play is theoretical in that it presents two opposing views of hegemony
and refuses to adjudicate between them. Rather, Persians leaves it up to its
Athenian audience to ruminate about the victory at Salamis and consider its
ramifications for a policy of empire. The “theoretical” perspective of Aeschylus’s play is polyphonic and necessarily open-ended. Interpretations which
exclusively endorse only the patriotic or the tragic elements of the drama fail
to see that those elements are not mutually exclusive but ultimately, together,
productive of thought.
Such an object of thought is decidedly political. Although Persians is
a drama with cosmic overtones, I argue that the question which the play
occasions is primarily political and concerns the direction which Athenian
hegemony should take in its recently established Delian League. The last few
decades have seen significant scholarly reflection on how to understand the
politics of Athenian tragedy, and I follow Goldhill in viewing Persians (like
Attic theater more generally) as “not so much a commentary on ta politika
as part of it.”7 Yet it remains to determine in what way Persians is a part of ta
politika of Athens in the decade following their victory at Salamis. Although
at first glance the political systems of Athens and Persia are profoundly different, both faced the dilemma of whether to pursue hegemony within their
region, and if so, what sort of hegemony.
To support the claim that Persians represents an exercise in Aeschylus’s
political theorizing, the first two sections of my paper survey the elements of
the play which I claim exist in unresolved tension. The first section examines
the patriotic side of the drama; the second section argues that Persians should
be understood as a tragedy which occasions fear and pity, including for its
main character Xerxes. In the third and final section, I contrast my political
interpretation of Persians with apolitical ones. The three sections jointly establish a claim for viewing Aeschylus as a political theorist of Athenian hegemony
(among his other brilliant skills as a didaskalos or teacher of Athens).
Simon Goldhill, “Civic Ideology and the Problem of Difference: The Politics of Aeschylean Tragedy,
Once Again,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 120 (2000): 35. D. M. Carter, The Politics of Greek Tragedy
(Exeter: Bristol Phoenix, 2007), 21–63, offers an excellent overview of frameworks employed to interpret the politics of Athenian tragedy; A. F. Garvie, Aeschylus Persae (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), xvi–xxii, surveys the question in the case of Persians.
7
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
387
Patriotic Elements in Persians
In his Frogs, Aristophanes stages a contest in Hades between Euripides and
Aeschylus concerning who is the more admired poet, and the standard of
admiration consists in who makes people better members of their community
(1008–9). Aeschylus responds that after producing Seven Against Thebes—a
play which teaches valor in battle—“I produced my Persians, which taught
them to yearn always to defeat the enemy, and thus I adorned an excellent
achievement” (1026–27, trans. Henderson). Within the dramatic and political context of the Frogs, which was staged near the end of the Peloponnesian
War in 404 and laments the decline in Athens’s military and theatrical excellence, the invocation of Aeschylus betrays nostalgia for an earlier Athens.
But whereas Aristophanes’s Aeschylus appears to understand the inculcation of martial virtue as the unproblematic goal of the theatrical didaskalos,
according to my interpretation, the Aeschylus who authored Persians has a
far more sophisticated understanding of martial virtue, one which includes
recognition of the limits of martial virtue. Although yearning to defeat one’s
enemies may be a part of martial virtue, it cannot be the whole of it, since
courage may also require coexistence with one’s enemies. More generally,
true martial excellence discerns whether a city should (or should not) seek
hegemony. Although a patriotic reading of Persians can account for Aristophanes’s more simplistic notion of martial virtue within the drama, only a
theoretical reading of Persians can capture the more sophisticated notion of
martial excellence which the drama aims to produce. It is only within that
broader questioning framework that one can appreciate the context of his
patriotic praise of Athenian martial excellence at the battle of Salamis.
The drama’s major objects of praise can be isolated in a thirteen-line
exchange between the Persian queen and the chorus of Persian elders.8 The
exchange runs as follows (231–45):
Queen:
There is something I wish to learn, my friends. Where in the
world do they say that Athens is situated?
Chorus:
Far away, near the place where the Lord Sun declines and sets.
Queen: And yet my son had a desire to make that city his prey [thērasai]?
8
A point made by Harrison, Emptiness of Empire, 55–60.
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Chorus:
Yes, because all Greece would then become subject [hupēkoos] to
the King.
Queen:
Do they have such great numbers of men in their army?
Chorus:
And an army of a quality that has already done the Medes a great
deal of harm.
Queen:
Why, are they distinguished for their wielding of the drawn bow
and its darts?
Chorus:
Not at all; they use spears for close combat and carry shields
for defense.
Queen:
And what else apart from that? Is there sufficient wealth in
their stores?
Chorus:
They have a fountain of silver, a treasure in their soil.
Queen:
And who is the shepherd, master [kapidespozei], and commander
over them?
Chorus:
They are not called slaves [douloi] or subjects [hupēkooi] to
any man.
Queen:
How can they resist an invading enemy?
Chorus:
Well enough to have destroyed the large and splendid army
of Darius.
Queen:
What you say is fearful [deina] to think about, for the parents of
those who have gone there.
The stichomythia underscores three patriotic characteristics of Athens that
are echoed elsewhere in the tragedy, namely, the preeminence of Athens
among the Greeks, the preeminence of Athenian martial virtue, and the role
which Athenian self-government plays in producing the former two characteristics. With respect to the first characteristic, it is telling that the queen
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
389
asks only about Athens and the chorus suggests that strategically, conquering Athens is the key to conquering mainland Greece. Although Persians
alludes once to the decisive Spartan victory in 479 at Plataea which ended
Xerxes’s invasions (816–20), its audience could be forgiven for thinking that
from the Persian perspective, their wars with Greece were reducible to the
battles of Salamis and Marathon, namely, battles in which Athenian generals
and forces were decisive (cf. 236, 244, and 475). Aeschylus appears to be echoing a story also found in Herodotus when he has both the messenger and
King Darius state “remember Athens” (memnēsth’ Athēnōn, 824, cf. 285).
According to Herodotus, following the destruction of Sardis, Darius ordered
a slave to repeat to him thrice daily “Master, remember the Athenians” (Hdt.
5.105; cf. 6.94). Persians suggests that the defeat at Salamis will let the king of
an empire that stretched from Egypt to the Indus river finally remember the
largely insignificant city that was early fifth-century Athens.
The chorus’s claim that Athenians fight by spear and shield rather than by
bow and dart plays upon Athenian pride in its martial excellence in juxtaposition with Persian forces who champion projectiles. Hoplite battle required
courage, discipline, and even the social status that comes from being able to
afford one’s own armor; by contrast, the Athenians viewed Persian soldiers as
less courageous fighters because of their use of bow and dart (see, for instance
85, 146–49) and Xerxes famously enters the stage wearing an empty quiver
of arrows (1020–23). Elsewhere in the drama Persian forces are contrasted
negatively with Athenians in naval battle: Athenian triremes emerge at first
light in orderly fashion “with cheerful confidence” (eupsuchō(i) thrasei, 394)
and with good order and discipline (eutaktōs…kosmō(i), 399, 400), singing
a paean or song praising their freedom. Although Persian forces, duped by
the Athenian’s deception, are initially characterized as “not disorderly” (ouk
akosmōs, 374) under cover of night, once they are vanquished by Greek forces
in battle, they flee in disarray (akosmō(i), 422); the same is said of the Persian
land forces composed of nobles who are butchered at Psyttaleia and of the
surviving forces during the general retreat at Strymon (470, 481). Although
the parodos of the play characterizes Xerxes’s army as invincible—a great
flood of men incapable of being controlled by a barrier (87–92)—by the time
of the kommos, Persian forces are characterized as luckless in war (duspolemon, 1013).
The claim that Athenians—while neither slave nor subject to any man—
are nonetheless capable of defeating even Darius’s army at Marathon plays
upon a final patriotic theme found throughout the play, namely, the view that
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Athenian freedom and self-government were responsible for their victory
over Persian forces.9 To the Persian queen, Athenian freedom is an impediment to order; to the Athenians, it is the source of their strength. From the
outset of Persians, the chorus claims that Persian forces seek to place “the yoke
of slavery” upon Greece (50) and the queen characterizes Xerxes’s expedition
against Athens as a “hunt” (thērasai, 233), as if the Greeks were animals.10
The Persian perspective is clearest in the queen’s ominous dream, which she
describes on the eve of battle:
There seemed to come into my sight two finely dressed women, one
arrayed in Persian, the other in Doric robes, outstandingly superior in
stature to the women of real life, of flawless beauty, and sisters of the
same stock: one, by the fall of the lot, was a native and inhabitant of
Greece, the other a barbarian. I seemed to see these two raising some
kind of strife [stasis] between themselves; my son, perceiving this,
tried to restrain and calm them, yoked them under his chariot, and
passed the yoke-strap under their necks. One of them, thus arrayed,
towered up proudly and kept her jaw submissively in harness; but the
other began to struggle, tore the harness from the chariot with her
hands, dragged it violently along without bridle or bit, and smashed
the yoke in half. My son fell out. His father Darius appeared, standing
beside him and showing pity; but when Xerxes saw him, he tore the
robes that clothed his body. (181–99)
The dream foreshadows the narrative arc of the remainder of the play, but
most important is its presentation of Persian self-understanding of Greek
and Persian polarity. From the queen’s perspective, both the Persian and
Greek peoples—represented by the two sisters—are in need of obedience and
mastery to eliminate their intrafamilial strife or stasis (188). Xerxes’s mission
is to serve as “master, shepherd, and commander” (245) to both peoples, ultimately so that both peoples can realize their innate beauty and noble natures.
Thus the queen’s amazement: how can a people without a master, shepherd,
or commander field a dominant military force?
The freedom which the queen represents as the characteristic of an unruly
sister, the Athenians represent as the cause of their victory.11 The battle of
Freedom (eleutheria) is said to be what will undo the Persian empire when its soldiers will no longer
wear the yoke of monarchy (591–95). Herodotus, writing a half century after Aeschylus, also claims
that it was Athens’s transition from tyranny to democracy that began its ascent to military power
(Hdt. 5.78).
9
The image is reversed in the description of the slaughter of drowned Persian sailors who were pummeled like a catch of fish (425).
10
11
As Plato and Aristotle note, freedom is a defining characteristic of democratic self-government
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
391
Salamis commences when the Greek fleet rows out to meet the Persian vessels, crying, “Come on, sons of the Greeks, for the freedom of your homeland,
for the freedom of your children, your wives, the temples of your fathers’
gods, and the tombs of your ancestors! Now all is at stake!” (404–5). When
the queen notes that the vanquished leader, Xerxes, will not be held accountable—will not be audited by his city (ouch hupeuthunos polei, 213)—she again
underscores the difference between Athenians who democratically hold their
leaders accountable and an unaccountable Persian king who “leads” his naval
commanders by the threat of beheading (370–71).12 It is difficult to imagine an
audience, many of whom fought in the battle eight years earlier, viewing these
scenes in the shadow of the acropolis (recently pillaged by Xerxes’s troops)
feeling anything except extraordinary pride for the victory at Salamis.
In sum, Persians repeatedly praises Athens in patriotic terms, both directly
and by posing contrasts between Persians and Athenians. Athenian preeminence among other Greeks, its martial excellence, and its self-government
based in democratic freedom are all showcased in Persians in an unblemished
and patriotic form. No interpretation of the play can ignore or diminish these
patriotic elements. And yet, Persians—as a dramatization rather than a retelling of history—at the same time holds out the events of Salamis as a cautionary
tale about how hegemony can become overreaching empire. Aeschylus theorizes about politics by holding both of these elements of martial success side
by side in a fashion which challenges his audience to consider the ramifications of the battle of Salamis for their own future course of action.
The Tragic Functions of Persians
Although Persians’s cautionary teaching on empire is juxtaposed with its
teaching on the strengths of Athenian self-government, yet some have denied
that the play presents any such cautions. For instance, Craig suggests that
Persians is only nominally a tragedy and that in fact it functions more like
an epinicion or victory ode.13 It is necessary, then, to argue that the drama
exhibits not only the form of tragedy—namely, that it includes actors and a
chorus, and is structured with episodes and stasima—but it also must function as a tragedy. Although identifying a univocal function for tragedy is
(Republic 8 557b–e; Politics 6.2.1317a40–b16).
A Persian queen, unfamiliar with Athens, would hardly know of its political practice of auditing
(euthuna). Persians ultimately claims that Xerxes is held accountable by Zeus the “stern assessor”
(euthunos barus, 828), which is divine rather than political accountability.
12
13
J. D. Craig, “The Interpretation of Aeschylus’ Persae,” Classical Review 38 (1924): 98–101.
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a Sisyphean task, certainly one function of tragedy is producing fear and
pity in its audience. As Munteanu notes, although different classical tragedies
produce fear and pity in their audiences in different ways, there is no dispute
about the claim that tragedy’s emotional production includes pity and fear.14
The sticking point for viewing Persians as tragic concerns whether the play
could produce pity and fear in its Athenian audience. Scholars have denied
that the play would have produced pity and fear on two grounds. First, some
have argued that Persians, as the depiction of a historical event, falls outside
the genre of tragedy.15 Second, some have argued that the proximity of the
play’s performance to the events it depicts would preclude an Athenian audience from identifying or empathizing with Persian suffering.16
In response to the first objection, which calls into question whether Persians
can function as a tragedy because of its historical object of representation, I
would like to argue first that although Persians is unique among surviving
tragedies in taking as its object a historical rather than a mythical action,
nonetheless there is ample evidence of Aeschylus’s contemporaries writing
other “historical tragedies.” In choosing to write a tragedy based on a historical event, Aeschylus modeled his drama on Phrynichus’s Phoenician Women
(produced in 476) which also dramatized the naval defeat at Salamis and
which Aeschylus alludes to in the opening lines of Persians. More infamously,
in approximately 492 Phrynichus produced the Capture of Miletus, which
depicted the siege and destruction of that Ionian city. According to Herodotus
(6.21), the play’s production caused the audience to burst into tears; Athens
fined Phrynichus one thousand drachmas “for reminding them of their own
evils” and ordered that the play never be performed again.17 Although “historical” tragedies are unusual in the surviving corpus, it is wrong to treat
them as quasi-historical documentaries rather than literary productions. As
Aristotle points out in his Poetics, although the poet is a maker of stories,
“even should his poetry concern actual events, he is no less a poet for that,
as there is nothing to prevent some actual events being probable as well as
possible, and it is through probability that the poet makes his material from
Dana Munteanu, Tragic Pathos: Pity and Fear in Greek Philosophy and Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
14
Craig, “Interpretation of Aeschylus’ Persae,” and A. J. Podlecki, The Political Background of
Aeschylean Tragedy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966).
15
16
See, for instance, Harrison, Emptiness of Asia, 51, and Munteanu, Tragic Pathos, 163.
See further David Rosenbloom, “Shouting Fire in a Crowded Theater: Phrynichos’ Capture of Miletus and the Politics of Fear in Early Attic Tragedy,” Philologus 137 (1993): 159–96.
17
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
393
them” (9.1451b29–33).18 Admittedly, Aristotle’s Poetics takes as its model
Sophoclean rather than Aeschylean tragedy. Nonetheless, its inclusion of
historical events within the domain of the tragic poet calls into question the
claim that in principle the depiction of a historical event would preclude a
play functioning as a tragedy.
A second argument against the claim that Persians does not function like
a tragedy because of its historical object calls into question the accuracy of
thinking of the drama as primarily “historical” rather than poetic. Although
Aeschylus interjects moments of verisimilitude into the play (perhaps foremost in the messenger’s account of the battle of Salamis), viewing the drama
as historical underestimates the poetic fictions which the poet incorporates
into Persians, fictions which neither his Athenian audience nor the judges
at the City Dionysia (who awarded the play first place) found problematic.
Consider the following three instances of Aeschylus’s poetic license. First,
Aeschylus depicts Darius as the voice of Greek wisdom and uses his character
as a foil to Xerxes. Aeschylus has Darius criticize his son for bridging the
continents of Asia and Europe and conducting military campaigns on the
Greek mainland (745–51), but as an Athenian audience would know full well,
Darius did the same during his own expedition into Scythia in 513 (which
included the bridging of the Bosporus) and his invasion of Attica in 490 (Hdt.
4.89, 6.102–4). A second instance of poetic license is Aeschylus’s depiction
of the battle as including two equal parts, a naval component in the bay of
Salamis and a land component on the island of Psyttaleia, which the messenger to the queen repeatedly emphasizes (433–34, 568, 676, 720, and 728). The
parallel between land and sea components implies equal praise of Athenian
naval and hoplite strengths and a humiliation of Persian nobles slaughtered
at Psyttaleia. Nonetheless, Aeschylus’s depiction of the land battle on Psyttaleia appears to exaggerate its importance.19 Thirdly, the messenger’s depiction
of an ill-fated retreat and destruction of the Persian remnant at the river
Strymon allows Aeschylus to show the cosmic or divine reversal of Xerxes’s
bridging of the Hellespont (495ff.): whereas Xerxes’s invasion began with the
shackling and bridging of natural forces, it ends with natural forces destroying his retreating army. Nonetheless, the event appears to be Aeschylus’s
I have discussed this further in “Aristotle on the (Alleged) Inferiority of Poetry to History,” in
Reading Aristotle, ed. R. Polansky and W. Wians (Leiden: Brill, 2017). 18
Barry Strauss, The Battle of Salamis (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), 193–95, documents
what historians know of the engagement at Psyttaleia. Herodotus devotes only a paragraph to the
incident (8.95).
19
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invention.20 Aeschylus exercises poetic license in his “historical” tragedy, and
it is a misunderstanding of dramatic verisimilitude to claim that such poetic
license is precluded on “historical” grounds.
Aeschylus’s clear examples of poetic license also point to what I take to
be one of his most provocative assertions about hegemony and empire. As
Kennedy notes, Aeschylus’s juxtaposition of Darius and Xerxes establishes
the distinction between Darius as “a fine model for a hegemonic leader of a
volunteer league” and Xerxes as the overreaching face of empire.21 No doubt,
the lesson of Xerxes is a cautionary tale about rash expansion. But the representation of Darius as the leader of a professional and voluntary multiethnic
army presents Aeschylus’s audience with an additional theoretical question,
namely, how one distinguishes between good and bad hegemony. The play’s
“softening” of Darius must have been breathtaking for the Marathōnomachoi
in the audience. Nonetheless, consistent with my claim about the “theoretical” nature of the play, Aeschylus does not argue for or against either forms of
hegemony. He merely presents options for his audience to reflect upon.
In response to the second objection, which calls into question whether
Persians can function as a tragedy for an Athenian audience because of the
proximity of its performance to the events it depicts, I argue that the play
depicts the universalization of a historical event in such a way that any audience can experience fear and pity for its objects. Fear and pity, of course, are
major themes throughout Persians, but most relevant to my argument are the
fear and apprehension which the chorus and the Persian queen feel prior to
the messenger’s announcement of the fate of Xerxes’s army and the pity and
mourning which the chorus and Xerxes express in the kommos of the play.
Aeschylus’s challenge (which his victory in 472 suggests he met) is to allow his
audience to see themselves in the Persian predicament of the play; they would
need to feel fear for the prospects of the departed army, just as they would fear
for their own soldiers on campaign, and they would need to feel pity upon
learning of the fate of the departed army, just as they would feel pity at the
destruction of their own departed army. I suggest Aeschylus accomplishes
such a goal by highlighting the commonality of Greeks and Persians, on one
hand, and, on the other, making Xerxes a more sympathetic character.
See further Bruce Lincoln, “Death by Water: Strange Events at the Strymon (Persae 492–507) and
the Categorical Opposition of East and West,” Classical Philology 95 (2000): 12–20.
20
21
Rebecca F. Kennedy, “A Tale of Two Kings: Competing Aspects of Power in Aeschylus’ Persians,”
Ramus 42 (2013): 70, 79.
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
395
Admittedly, showing the commonality of Greek and Persian is complicated by the fact that the play at times represents Persians as “the other” with
respect to language use, social institutions, clothing, and even the practice
of lamentation in public.22 And yet, in the retelling of the queen’s dream
(analyzed above), Aeschylus underscores Greek and Persian commonality by
suggesting that the two peoples are represented by sisters and their fighting
is characterized as stasis, or intracommunity warfare.23 The passage suggests
that the difference between Greek and Persian is the result of location and
upbringing rather than some innate or natural difference. Their experience
with different institutions has given the two sisters different temperaments,
especially with respect to authority; and it is wrong for Xerxes to think that
the two sisters can be together yoked to the same chariot. But the difference
between the two sisters does not subsume their commonality and even natural resemblance: it is only their artificial garments which allow the queen to
distinguish them at first (183–84).
Persians also appeals to the universality of fear which loved ones experience in the absence of their sons, spouses, and fathers who are at war. The
parodos and the first episode repeatedly remark on the fear and subsequent
mourning of the parents and wives of the Persian forces (10–15, 63, 121–25).24
Rather remarkably, Aeschylus sets the depiction of the Athenian naval victory
within the Persian royal city of Susa, a setting which minimizes Athenian
rejoicing and emphasizes Persian suffering. Even before knowledge of the
defeat, Aeschylus has the chorus proclaim that Persian
Beds are filled with tears
because the men are missed and longed for:
Persian women, grieving amid their luxury, every one,
loving and longing for her husband,
having sent on his way the bold warrior who was her bedfellow
is left behind, a partner yoked alone [monozux]. (132–37)
As Gagarin notes, “the image of the women alone in the yoke reinforces
the feeling that the wretchedness of the Persian families at home is directly
Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon,
1989), 76–98, is the classic statement of this position; Erich Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 11–12, cautions against overstatement.
22
In the parodos (76–78), Aeschylus also has the chorus allude to the tradition that the Persians
traced their descent to the Greek hero Perseus (Hdt. 7.61, 7.150).
23
24
Ippokratis Kantzios, “The Politics of Fear in Aeschylus’ Persians,” Classical World 98 (2004): 3–19,
notes that words denoting fear, concern, intimidation, and terror (such as phrontis, tarbos, deos,
phobos, and tromos) appear almost twice as frequently in Persians as they do in the rest of Aeschylus’s
surviving corpus.
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connected to the departure of the expedition in its attempt to yoke Greece,
for which it must first yoke the Hellespont.”25 Aeschylus shows that the
political problem facing Athens, for instance whether it should expand its
control over the recently freed Ionian poleis of Asia Minor, is also a domestic
problem. Military expansion, however glorious its results, always imposes a
domestic cost, one which Aeschylus knew quite personally, given the death
of his brother at the Athenian victory of Marathon (Hdt. 6.114).
In addition to emphasizing the commonality of Greeks and Barbarians
and the universality of suffering in wartime, Aeschylus also transforms the
main character of the play, Xerxes, into a pitiable character. Just as Aeschylus’s poetic license recasts Darius, who invaded Marathon, into the character
type of the wise father, so too does it recast Xerxes, who sacked Athens
and destroyed the temples on the Acropolis, into the character type of an
inexperienced and rash son trying to succeed in the shadow of his father’s
accomplishments. Xerxes’s inexperience is underscored several times in the
play. For instance, from the perspective of the queen’s dream, his desire to
rule stems from his naive response to stasis between Greeks and Persians
rather than a desire to exploit others (187–88). The drama criticizes Xerxes
only twice for tactical errors: he fails to recognize Themistocles’s deception
on the eve of the battle and he was mistaken to place Persian nobles on the
island of Psyttaleia (361, 454; cf. 550–53). Although these were unfortunate
decisions, they are not the marks of a hubristic or wicked tyrant.26
Aeschylus also makes the character of Xerxes pitiable by attributing his
mistakes to his rash (thourios or thrasus) character. Indeed, Aeschylus exploits
the ambiguity of the Greek terms, which can have both positive and negative
connotations (e.g., bold versus rash). The chorus first characterizes Xerxes
positively as thourios archōn (74) or “bold leader” in charge of populous Asia,
but following the necromancy of Darius, the queen twice refers to thourios
Xerxes or (as the context makes clear) “raging Xerxes” (718, 744). Both the
Queen and Darius also attribute Xerxes’s decision to bridge the Hellespont to
his youth (754, 782) or a temporary sickness of mind (751; cf. 726, 749). The
army which Xerxes leaves behind after he retreats from Greece, which will
subsequently be destroyed at Plataea (817), is characterized as hubristic and
godless (807–12), but Darius distinguishes the army from his son and blames
25
Michael Gagarin, Aeschylean Drama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 38.
Although Persians makes reference to hubris twice (808, 821), Garvie, Aeschylus: Persae, xxxii,
argues persuasively that it is simplistic to read the play solely as the condemnation of hubristic
overextension.
26
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
397
them each for different failings. In the case of the army, which had plundered
the sacred images of the gods, “because of the evil they have done [kakōs
drasantes], they are suffering evil to match it in full measure [paschousi…
kakōn]” (813–14). But the verdict is different for Xerxes. In his final invocation to the queen, Darius states that
Zeus, I tell you, stands over and chastises arrogant minds, and he is a
stern assessor. With this in mind, please advise Xerxes to show good
sense [sōphronein]; warn him, with well-spoken admonitions, to stop
offending the gods with his boastful rashness [huperkompō(i) thrasei].
(827–31)
Darius believes that sōphrosunē is within Xerxes’s grasp if he were to moderate his rashness. In her dream, the queen foreshadows that Darius will feel
pity for his son (197); the final scene enacts such pity. Aeschylus makes Xerxes
a pitiable character by underscoring the dynamic between a powerful father
and the son who tragically seeks to imitate his successes. That his errors stem
from inexperience and rashness makes his character (although not necessarily the historical person) someone with whom an audience can empathize.
Aeschylus dissolves the Athenian inability to empathize with their foes
first by emphasizing their common humanity, and second by characterizing
the errors of the play’s “hero” as ultimately pitiable rather than loathsome.
The poet’s license with historical details introduces an ambiguity which lies
at the heart of his political theorizing, one which indeed seems embedded in
the dramatization of politics. Politics, like history, concerns particular judgments in highly specific and complicated contexts. No country simply “goes
to war”; rather, a specific political administration addresses strategic, tactical,
political, and even biographical questions, and chooses to wage war with a
specific foe. Aeschylean drama, by contrast, regularly employs historical references—not only with the use of the battle of Salamis in Persians, but also with
the invocation of the Areopagus in Eumenides or the first attested invocation
of dēmokratia in the Suppliants. But Aeschylus recasts such historical details
poetically in the perfection of his tragic art. Aeschylean political theorizing
plays upon such ambiguity between what is historical and what is poetic or
universal. The Athenian who believes that the martial and political virtues of
his city’s self-government insulate his city from “oriental” or “Persian” royal
imperialism is forced, through a viewing of Persians, to question the distance
between democratic martial excellence and imperial martial excellence.
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The Political Nature of Aeschylus’s Theorizing in Persians
In Persians, Aeschylus transforms the historical destruction of the Persian
navy and army into a family tragedy about a father, son, and—from a Persian
perspective—their extended sibling or familial clan (which they have paternal responsibility to yoke and direct). Whereas the former is a particular
event, the latter is a universal story about loss and suffering. A queen, who
enters the play on a chariot, is transformed into a mother concerned about
her son’s survival on the battlefield. A king, who invaded Attica and sought
to make Athens an example of the costs of disobedience, is transformed into
a sagacious father who pities and advises his son. And a godlike conqueror is
transformed into an inexperienced and rash son who incautiously fails to live
up to the accomplishments of his father. The son’s military conquest strikes
fear into the hearts of his parents, the parents and families of his soldiers,
and the parents and families of his foes. At the same time, that conqueror’s
army and navy is defeated by self-governing sailors and soldiers who alone
stop the Persian advance into Greece. That Athenian army and navy sent
the conqueror home to his mother, a tattered remnant of the river-bridging
autocrat. The play simultaneously holds together tragic emotions of fear and
pity and invocations of Athenian pride and patriotism.
It is understandable thus that scholars such as Harrison and Rosenbloom, preeminent proponents of mutually exclusive patriotic and tragic
readings of the play’s attitude towards empire, can make strong arguments supporting their positions. Invocations of fear and pity for Persian
suffering are central elements within the play; Athenian celebration over
their victory at Salamis also are central elements within the play. As noted
at the outset, my paper is the application of Euben’s insight that tragedy
is theoretical insofar as it enables its viewers “to reflect on their lives with
a generality denied them in their capacity as political actors.”27 Although
there are numerous ways in which a tragedy may be “theoretical,” I claim
that Persians is theoretical in its refusal to resolve this tension. The play
occasions the space for its audience or readers to be able to debate, to
criticize, and to think about weighing the various competing elements
which the work takes up. In the case of Persians, programmatic closure is
ultimately antithetical to theoretical reflection. And the desire of modern
scholars to seek closure in Aeschylus’s Persians seems to push against the
inherently ambivalent closure often found in his surviving tragedies.
27
Euben, “Battle of Salamis,” 367.
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
399
Consider what I take to be a parallel theoretical moment in Aeschylus’s
Suppliants. The play tells the story of Danaus and his fifty daughters who flee
Egypt and the fifty sons of their uncle Aegyptus (who wish to force them into
marriage) to find refuge as suppliants in Argos, their ancestral home. The
play includes a passage which preserves two of the earliest surviving evocations of the term dēmokratia.28 Pelasgus, the king of Argos, calls the people to
assembly to deliberate over the supplications of the Danaid women. Danaus
and the chorus of his daughters report the results (600–605, 609–14):
Danaus:
A most decisive decree has been passed by the people [dēmou].
Chorus:
Welcome, old father; you bring splendid news. Tell us what the
final decision is that has been reached, and in what direction the
majority of the people’s sovereign vote [dēmou kratousa]29 went.
Danaus:
The Argives have resolved, with no divided voice…that we shall
have the right of residence [metoikein] in this land of freedom,
with asylum and protection from seizure by any person; that no
one, whether inhabitant or foreigner, may lay hands upon us; and
that if force be applied, whoever among these citizens fails to
come to our aid shall lose his civic rights and be driven into exile
in the community.30
Such a patriotic defense of the democratic protection of the vulnerable needs
to be balanced with the results of this democratic action: the Argive protection of the Danaids results in war with the sons of Aegyptus and apparently
the death and overthrow of the king Pelasgus who had argued on behalf
of the Danaids at the assembly. Like the Persians, the Suppliants presents a
complicated and polyphonic view of democracy, one which simultaneously
preserves both its pro- and antidemocratic elements. My brief examination
of the parallel theoretical moment in Suppliants suggests that the kind of
theoretical claim I attribute to Persians is not unprecedented in Aeschylus’s
surviving corpus.
28
See V. Ehrenberg, “Origins of Democracy,” Historia 1 (1950): 522.
In the next stasimon, Aeschylus has the chorus claim, “And may the people, which rules the city
[to damion, to ptolin kratunei] protect well the citizens’ privileges, a government acting with craft and
foresight for the common good” (Supp. 698–700).
29
Sommerstein translation in Persians, Seven against Thebes, Suppliants, Prometheus Bound (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).
30
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If viewing the Persians as preserving a tension between patriotism and
tragic aspects of empire is superior to viewing the play as elevating one side of
that tension over the other, nonetheless there are competing interpretations
of how the play incorporates both elements. I have argued that when Persians juxtaposes praise for martial virtues alongside cautions about martial
overreach, Aeschylus leaves those elements in tension to excite thought in his
audience members.31 The drama thus invites thought about how to inculcate
and produce a martial society which avoids its pitfall.32 According to such a
reading, Aeschylus’s Persians is a profoundly political play—one which challenges an Athenian audience to look at and evaluate both their present and
their possible future selves.
By contrast, some scholars preserve the tension between patriotic and
tragic elements in the play, but do so by reading Persians as an apolitical
expression of cosmic forces. Gruen, for instance, reads the play as a cosmic
tragedy in which “Hellenic arms are little more than pawns in the scheme
of the gods to drive home the lesson to mortals.”33 I call Gruen’s reading of
the play “apolitical” because ultimately the political characteristics of those
pawns—that they are members of a self-governing polis or the royal palace
at Susa—are irrelevant to the outcome of the drama. Gagarin, by contrast,
takes the play to illustrate “the general precept that whatever grows too great
eventually falls.”34 I call Gagarin’s reading of the play “apolitical” because it
too seeks a resolution of the play on a cosmic level in some sort of coexistence
of opposites (Gagarin likens it to the paradoxes of Heraclitus)35 that is distant
from human action and particular human actors. Gagarin’s Aeschylus is a
didaskalos more like a Taoist sage than Aristophanes’s maker of good citizens.
No doubt, there are cosmic forces at play in Aeschylus’s plays, and Gagarin
offers an especially rich interpretation oriented by such phenomena. And yet
something seems profoundly missing when an interpretation of Aeschylus’s
play loses sight of its civic and indeed even practical objectives, much less the
Although my own position is indebted to the insights in Euben, “Battle of Salamis,” and Simon
Goldhill, “Battle Narrative and Politics in Aeschylus’ Persae,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 108 (1988):
189–93, about political theorizing within the civic space afforded by tragedy to question institutions,
neither article explains in detail how Persians accomplishes that theorizing.
31
Kennedy, “Tale of Two Kings,” 65, 76–78, correctly points out that Persians even raises the question
whether all forms of empire are equally problematic.
32
33
Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity, 19.
34
Gagarin, Aeschylean Drama, 51.
35
Ibid., 54.
The Political Theorizing of Aeschylus’s Persians
4 01
“questioning” and polyphonic character of a play in which Persian elders, a
queen, and both living and resurrected kings speak.
Aeschylus’s Persians holds out to its audience and readers views about
actions that are in tension and thus in need of deliberation. Those actions
seem unavoidably political in the sense that they concern choices which the
Athenian polis needs to confront. A virtue of my reading of the play is that
it preserves the significance of both its political and interrogative elements. I
believe that Persians, somewhat like a Platonic dialogue, produces aporia in
those who watch it or read it carefully, aporia that is theoretical insofar as it
is productive of questioning. Whether other Aeschylean tragedies produce
such a sense of aporia to the same extent and in a similar fashion is an open
question relevant to the study of each play. But the interplay of conflicting
views about the political phenomenon which Persians depicts and the tragedy’s ultimate lack of closure on the advantages and disadvantages of martial
excellence seems to go to the heart of what makes it a perennially powerful tragedy. Aristophanes was right to say that Aeschylus is a didaskalos or
teacher who makes the citizens of his city better; but he was wrong to imply
that Euripides alone helped people think by introducing critical reflection
(Frogs, 971–75).36
An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Association for Political Theory in October
2012 as part of a working group panel, “The Politics of Drama, the Drama of Politics: Staging Ancient
Political Thought,” which was organized by Jill Frank. I received superb feedback from panelists,
including Jill, Arlene Saxonhouse, Steve Salkever, Joel Schlosser, Jeff Miller, and David McIvor, who
commented on successive drafts of the paper. The paper received further comment on a panel at the
May 2013 Northeast Political Science Association meeting from fellow panelists Stephanie Nelson,
Jill Gordon, Liz Markovits, and Eleni Panagiotarakou. I am especially grateful to the editor and
anonymous referees of Interpretation whose probing questions and challenges have improved the
manuscript substantially.
36
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The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
403
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation: Islamic Revelation
and Its Relationship with Reason and Philosophy
R asou l Na m a zi
University of Chicago
[email protected]
Since the arrival of revealed religions and their encounter with Greek philosophy, the issue of the relationship between reason and revelation has been
one of the most important problems in the history of thought. One important aspect of this issue is that it determines and guides the relationship that
philosophers have with religious writings, which rest upon faith in divine
revelation. Knowing that they are products of a miraculous contact with
God, how should one approach them? Can they be read, understood, and
evaluated like any other writing? Is a philosophic approach to revealed texts
possible? More importantly, are revealed texts compatible with the spirit of
philosophy? Do revealed texts approve or disapprove of the pursuit of knowledge through natural human reason?
In this paper, I intend to study the relationship between the Qur’an and
philosophy. Naturally one must first explain what one means by “philosophy”
and expound its relationship with divine revelation and faith. Let me begin
with the question of reason before turning to philosophy. The clearest discussion of the reason-faith distinction is found in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa
Theologica.1 As Aquinas explains, to have faith is to assent to something, to
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments, which greatly contributed to improving the final version of the paper.
1
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. the English Dominican Fathers (London: Burns, Oates
& Washbourne, 1922), II-II q. 1 a. 5.
© 2017 Interpretation, Inc.
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accept it as true, because it is revealed by God. One knows by faith that something is true because God has said it. On the contrary, to know something by
reason is to assent to it because it is perceived as true by our reason, that is, by
our natural faculties. To know by reason is to assent to something independently of divine revelation: faith is “the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1).2
The believer assents to that which he believes, not because he sees it or has
rational proofs for it, but because he trusts in what divine revelation tells him.
Now even if such a clear-cut distinction between reason and revelation is
also present in Islamic thought,3 many contemporary scholars of Islam tend
to obfuscate or simply ignore it. Among the notable examples is Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an influential figure in the field of Islamic studies. Nasr defends
and follows a form of Islamic philosophy that he calls “prophetic philosophy,”
a kind of theosophy rather than philosophy.4 Nasr is a modern representative
of the postclassical tradition of Islamic thought in which falsafah became
transformed into al-hikmat al-ilahiyyah (divine wisdom) and gave birth to
a synthesis of philosophy, mystical contemplation, and the esoteric reading
of the Qur’an, Hadith, and the sayings of the imams and Sufi sages. This
kind of philosophy easily leaps from the theoretical intellect of the Greeks
to revelation and Hadith, ignoring the reason-faith distinction. Nasr’s synthetic perspective is particularly relevant to our question as he and some of
his former students have recently edited a new translation of the Qur’an with
annotations and several commentaries which clearly bear the influence of his
philosophical approach.5 However, ignoring the reason-faith distinction is
not limited to the traditionalists and the followers of the postclassical tradition of Islamic philosophy.
I have used the King James Version for biblical quotations. I have also made extensive use of M. A.
Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an: English Translation with Parallel Arabic Text (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010) which I have sometimes slightly modified to make it more literal. References to the
Qur’an are identified by “Q.”
2
Alfarabi, “Enumeration of the Sciences,” in The Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other
Texts, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 81–84, V. 5, Uthman
Amin 109ff.
3
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “The Quran and Hadith as Source and Inspiration of Islamic Philosophy,”
in History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman (New York: Routledge,
2003), 27ff.
4
See especially Seyyed Hossein Nasr et al., eds., The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 1645–59, 1659–79, 1719–37, 1737–51. To see the influence of
Nasr’s philosophical approach on this commentary, apart from the traditional esoteric interpretation
of well-known verses (e.g. Q 24:35), see the annotations on Q 2:189.
5
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
405
We can see the same trend among the modernist Muslims who, facing
the incompatibility of the Qur’an with the latest discoveries of human reason and the ideals of modernity, try to provide a more rational and modern
understanding of the Qur’an: among these figures is the influential intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush. The latter began his reflection on the relationship
between Qur’anic revelation and reason by arguing that while the Qur’an,
as the Word of God, is immutable, our understanding of it is necessarily
historical as it is dependent on our particular situation and intellectual presuppositions. Soroush does not argue that there is no objective meaning in
the Sacred Text independent of the subject. In this regard, he is not as radical as Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, another contemporary scholar of the Qur’an,
who simply denied the possibility of any objective meaning. However, for
Soroush, the Sacred Text itself, like Kant’s noumenon, is out of our reach and
can only be accessed by us through the use of our reason.6 In other words, we
cannot speak of the one and true meaning of the Qur’an or divine knowledge
properly, as our interpretation of scripture always reflects our human and
historical presuppositions and any “divine knowledge” acquired from the
Qur’an is in the end human.
In recent years, Soroush has made a much more radical claim by underscoring the role of the Prophet in the composition of the Qur’an. From this
perspective, not only our knowledge and interpretation of the Qur’an but also
the Qur’an itself is historical, as it is the product of the mind of the Prophet,
and thus bears all of his human limitations and imperfections. According to
Soroush, the crude corporalism, the dated scientific views, the Arabic character of the rewards promised to the believers, the inhuman social norms
like slavery, and the cruel punishments like amputations found in the Qur’an
each reflect the worldview of its author who lived in seventh-century Arabia.7
It seems that Soroush’s whole direction of thought goes toward a rather
conventional historicism and a denial of the divine origin of the Qur’an. In
this regard, the Qur’an appears as a product of human reason rather than
a divine message that must be followed by faith. However, Soroush is faced
with a dilemma, because he wants to remain faithful to the traditional idea
of the divine origin of the Qur’an and at the same time underscore the role
Abdolkarim Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam, ed. Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad
Sadri (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 31; Roy Jackson, What Is Islamic Philosophy? (New
York: Routledge, 2014), 73–74. For Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd see Navid Kermani, God Is Beautiful: The
Aesthetic Experience of the Quran, trans. Tony Crawford (Cambridge: Polity, 2015), 113–14.
6
Abdolkarim Soroush, The Expansion of Prophetic Experience, trans. Nilou Mobasser (Leiden: Brill,
2009), 70–83.
7
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of the Prophet in scripture. In other words, his objective is to subscribe to
a radical historicism while also preserving the traditional belief in a sphere
of knowledge beyond reason. Soroush’s way out of the dilemma is this: not
unlike Nasr, Soroush’s preoccupation with the Persian mysticism of Rumi
and the philosophical views of al-Ghazali pushes him toward an obfuscation of the reason-revelation distinction. He now speaks of the Qur’an as a
product of “prophetic dreams” not unlike the inspirations of poets and mystics and denies that his recent theological views amount to a straightforward
denial of the supernatural origin of the Qur’an.8
One can observe a similar dilemma in Fazlur Rahman’s historicist
hermeneutics of the Qur’an. Rahman also underscores the role of the Prophet
in the composition of the Qur’an while trying to remain faithful to the traditional conception of the Qur’an as the Word of God. For Rahman, the
“Qur’an is the divine response, through the Prophet’s mind, to the moralsocial situation of the Prophet’s Arabia.” Rahman’s objective is to maintain
the position according to which “the Qur’an is entirely the Word of God”
while simultaneously arguing that the Qur’an is “also entirely the word of
Muhammad.”9 As one can see from the conclusions of Rahman’s Qur’anic
hermeneutics, it is doubtful that one can uphold both of these contradictory
positions at the same time. Rahman contends that the truly divine message
of the Qur’an is ethical: the Qur’an intends to advertise and establish “an
egalitarian and just moral-social order.”10 However, it is not clear why these
moral values and objectives, which are also present in many purely rational
philosophical systems, must be considered suprarational and why they had to
be revealed to man by God. In other words, the efforts of Soroush, Rahman,
and other scholars to harmonize the Qur’an with modern ideas seem to culminate either in an abstraction from the suprarational or in an obfuscation
of the reason-faith distinction.
These cases show the importance of having a clear vision of the classical distinction between reason and faith in divine revelation when trying
to discuss the relationship between the Qur’an and philosophy. A good
example of such clarity in dealing with the question of revelation is found in
8
Abdolkarim Soroush, “Prophetic Dreams: Praise to a Sleep Better than Wakefulness,” BBC Persian,
2016, http://www.bbc.com/persian/blogs/2016/05/160525_l44_nazeran_sorush_bazargan; Katajun
Amirpur, “The Expansion of the Prophetic Experience: Abdolkarīm Sorūšh’s New Approach to
Qur’ānic Revelation,” Die Welt des Islams 51, no. 3–4 (2011): 428.
9
Fazlur Rahman, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 5, 31.
10
Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an (Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980), 62.
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
407
Leo Strauss’s writings on the Bible. One can benefit from his general framework to study the relationship between reason and revelation in the Qur’an.
Strauss’s framework is based on a fundamental question facing human
beings: whether they can acquire that knowledge which they need to guide
their lives by the unaided efforts of their natural powers, or whether their
knowledge of such matters is dependent upon divine revelation. The first
possibility is characteristic of philosophy and the second is that of revealed
religion. What one knows by reason one knows through faculties available,
in principle, to every human being. The source of rational knowledge is
ordinary sense perceptions and it is the result of reflection upon what one
acquires through senses. This natural human knowledge must be contrasted
with the supernatural knowledge available through revelation and contact
with the divine. The latter is given exclusively by God to those who through
supernatural means are in contact with him. In other words, the natural
rational knowledge of philosophers is different from the supernatural divine
knowledge of the prophets and men of god found in revealed texts like the
Bible. This is not to imply that the Bible, as a product of revelation, does not
occasionally make use of reasoning and arguments. Indeed, reasoning and
argument are also found in the Bible. For example, we can see evidence of
the biblical use of arguments in the following passage: “He that planted the
ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” (Ps. 94:9).
The reasoning being that the God who has made a sense organ also possesses
the faculty of sensing. But even here, in this uncommon example of reasoning, the Bible implies and presupposes the other part of the argument: God
made the ear.11 In other words, the mere use of reason in the Bible must be
distinguished from philosophy in the strict sense. For Strauss, revelation is
distinguished from philosophy in that it simply asserts what is true without
supporting the assertion with arguments. We know that the world was created by God “by virtue of declaration, pure and simple, by divine utterance
ultimately.”12 Assertion is the core and essence of revealed knowledge of the
Bible. There is a clear contrast between the reasoned, natural, and verifiable
approach of philosophy and the indemonstrable, supernatural, and rationally
unverifiable assertions of revelation.13
Leo Strauss, transcript of “Seminar in Political Philosophy: Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Spring 1964),”
session 3, April 6, 1964, p. 43, Leo Strauss Center, University of Chicago.
11
Leo Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity,
ed. Kenneth Hart Green (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 369.
12
John J. Ranieri, Disturbing Revelation: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Bible (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 116–24; Keith Ward, Religion and Revelation: A Theology of Revelation in
the World’s Religions (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).
13
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One other aspect of Strauss’s framework that would be helpful towards
our study of the Qur’an is that Strauss rejects the possibility of a synthesis
of reason and revelation and argues that dependence on either of these two
different kinds of knowledge results in two different and opposite ways of life:
“the one thing needful according to Greek philosophy is the life of autonomous understanding. The one thing needful as spoken by the Bible is the
life of obedient love.”14 One brings the autonomy, self-reliance, curiosity, and
doubt that are characteristic of philosophy, while the other accounts for the
heteronomy, dependence, faith, and certitude that characterize faith in revelation and religion. No harmonization or synthesis of philosophy and religion
is possible because they both proclaim their exclusivity: a life of obedience
to divine wisdom or a life of free insight are the two opposing alternatives
available to man.15 From the Bible’s perspective, philosophic doubt and the
quest for knowledge are either superfluous or impious.16 Philosophy necessarily enters into conflict with revealed religions because these religions are
based on the idea that the Creator of the world, through His prophets or by
His incarnation, has revealed to man the most important knowledge about
the world, god, and the purpose of life, and that this knowledge is more complete and comprehensive than the knowledge that man, by his own forces,
can achieve. From the height of divine wisdom revealed by God, the human
knowledge of the philosophers is at best incomplete or, at worst, wrong and
a sign of vanity.17
Argument for Revelation
Taking the above framework into account, we can now ask: What is the relationship between the reason-revelation dichotomy and the Qur’an? Should
the Qur’an be approached as a work of revelation rather than a work of reason? Must we put the Qur’an against philosophy in the same way that the
Bible is the antagonist of philosophy? The surest way to discuss this issue is
Leo Strauss, “Progress or Return?,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction
to the Thought of Leo Strauss, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 104.
14
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 74–75; Leo
Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in In Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995), 22; Leo Strauss, “Thucydides: The Meaning of Political History,”
in Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 73; Ehud Luz, “How to Read the Bible According to Leo
Strauss,” Modern Judaism 25, no. 3 (2005): 264–84.
15
Leo Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 172.
16
17
See Ps. 94:11, 1 Cor. 1:19, 3:19, Jer. 8:9, Isa. 29:14.
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
409
to consult the Qur’an itself and begin at the beginning.18 According to traditional accounts, the opening of sura Al-ʻAlaq (Q 96:1–5) was the first Qur’anic
revelation.19 Ibn Ishaq reports that Muhammad used to go alone into the
cave of Hira where he would spend several days in meditation. One night
the angel of revelation, Gabriel, comes to him and commands him to “read.”
Mohammed replies, “What shall I read?” The angel insists and “pressures”
him three times and every time Mohammed says the same thing: “What
shall I read?” “Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One who taught by the
pen, who taught man what he did not know” (Q 96:3–5). In these first lines
of Qur’an, it is emphasized that man is taught by the Creator. The allusion to
“pen” is also significant: it has always been the most important and elementary instrument of learning and teaching, and there are some traditional
reports that claim that the 68th sura, entitled Al-Qalam (“the pen”) was the
second sura revealed to Muhammad. Traditionally Muslims have drawn
the conclusion from these verses that the Prophet was illiterate,20 a claim
that was supposedly advanced to refute the charge that he had plagiarized
ideas present in Judeo-Christian writings (see Q 29:48, 2:78, 3:20, 3:75, 62:2).
According to these traditions, the man who was charged with transmitting
God’s revelation was illiterate and therefore could not have composed the
Qur’an. However, it seems that the message of these first verses goes beyond
stressing the illiteracy of the Prophet and hence the divine origin of the Book.
Another possibility is to engage in a study of Islamic tradition to see how the Qur’an was perceived by its first readers and its original transmitters. However, there are serious problems in the
historiography of early Islam as some sceptical scholars have powerfully challenged the reliability
of early traditional sources and have shown how little we can reliably know from traditions (hadith)
and prophetic biographies (Sira) about the life of the Prophet and the context in which the Qur’anic
text first appeared. Therefore, I believe it is more reasonable to look exclusively at the Qur’anic text
as a resource for discussing this issue. For the sceptical school see Patricia Crone and Michael Allan
Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977);
Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987);
Joseph Schacht, “A Revaluation of Islamic Traditions,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great
Britain and Ireland, no. 2 (1949): 143–54; John Wansbrough, Qur’anic Studies: Sources and Methods
of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); John Wansbrough, The Sectarian
Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978);
Andreas Görke, “Prospect and Limits in the Study of the Historical Muḥammad,” in The Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki, ed. Nicolet
Boekhoff-van der Voort, Kees Versteegh, and Joas Wagemakers (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 137–51. One of
the merits of following the sceptical school in approaching the study of the Qur’an is that one can
thereby concentrate on scripture itself rather than reading the text through the lens of the traditional
“occasions of revelation” (asbab al-nuzul) or its modern historicist equivalents.
18
Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, trans. A. Guillaume (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004),
106–7.
19
James A. Beverley, “Muhammad,” in The Qur’an: An Encyclopedia, ed. Oliver Leaman (New York:
Routledge, 2006), 420.
20
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These passages also show that the source of learning in general is God. It is
from Him that man receives knowledge. Knowledge is owed to Him. God is
the teacher of what man did not know, and presumably could not know by
himself and through his own ingenuity.
There are many other passages in the Qur’an which can be advanced to
prove the dependence of man on divine knowledge. The first sura, the obligatory part of the daily prayer in Islam, depicts Muslims asking God to “guide”
them to the straight path (Q 1:6). It seems that according to the Qur’an no
one can guide his life without a divine scripture (Q 6:156ff., 37:167ff.). It also
seems that the idea of conscience is absent in the Qur’an and independent
reason is considered insufficient for guiding men in their lives.21 Scripture is
presented as “containing guidance for those who are pious” (Q 2:2–4). God
condemns those who try to imitate God’s words and give their opinions
about the state of the afterlife, those who say things of which they have no real
knowledge (Q 2:79–80). One can see the same idea in a conversation reported
between God and the angels in which the latter declare their inability to
name things because they “have knowledge only of what” God has taught
them, “the All Knowing and All Wise.” In contrast, Adam is shown capable
of naming things because God “taught Adam all the names” (Q 2:31–33).
The divine origin of human knowledge is also true of Muhammad to whom
God taught “the Scripture, wisdom, and things” he did not know (Q 2:151,
2:231, 7:62, 8:60, 12:86, 12:96, 62:2). God reminds Muhammad that He taught
him “what was beyond [his] knowledge” (Q 12:102, 26:83, 26:132). God is
also said to have given knowledge and wisdom to other prophets and men
mentioned in the Qur’an, including Moses (Q 28:14), the Children of Israel
(Q 45:16), David, Solomon (Q 27:15, 38:20), Luqman (Q 31:12), and Jesus (Q
43:63). The Qur’an condemns the arrogance of man, because “he sees himself
self-sufficient,” while it was God who “taught man what he did not know…by
the pen” (Q 96:4–7).
The divine origin of Qur’anic knowledge is also manifest in its style: the
Qur’an speaks to Mohammed or speaks about him, but Mohammed never
speaks in the text, he is silent. Muhammad’s detractors deride him as only
“an ear!” (Q 9:61). Mohammed’s most famous epithet is “messenger” (rasul).
He is unequivocally only a messenger and the originator of the message is
God. The word “Qur’an” itself, used for naming the whole body of the text,
originally means “reading” or “reciting” and the Qur’an sometimes calls
21
Cf. Rom. 2:14–15 and Rémi Brague, La Loi de Dieu (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 152.
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
411
itself a book or writing (kitab). In other words, the audience’s relationship
to the Qur’an is one of a reader or a listener, that is, a passive receiver. The
Qur’an is “sent down” (nuzul) to men, an expression which in various forms
is used more than two hundred times in the text. The Qur’an also calls itself
al-furqan, the distinguisher, and it is said that God gave Moses “the Book,
and the distinguisher, so that you might be guided” (Q 2:53, 25:1). One must
say that the Qur’an, which promises the triumph of those who “stand in awe
of God” (Q 24:52), is more akin to the Bible that says “the fear of the Lord is
the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10, Jer. 9:23) than to Socrates’s way of life
which stressed that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” The believer, as
he is depicted in the Qur’an and the Bible, lives in fear, anxiety, and trembling
(Q 8:2, 70:19) as well as in hope: fear of God, the End of Time, and “imminent torment” (Q 78:40), along with the hope of eternal bliss (Q 76:11–22).
The believer does not live the philosophic life of serenity and leisure (scholē)
beyond fear and hope.22
Considering these points, one might conclude that according to the
Qur’anic perspective the most important knowledge is only available
through revelation, while the philosophic life dedicated to curiosity, doubt,
and the acquisition of knowledge through reason is at least superfluous and
bound to fail or is even characteristic of unbelief. The Qur’an provides man
with a knowledge that is beyond his natural capacities that he must simply
believe and embrace unconditionally. But is it possible to present a case for
the Qur’an as a work of reason which is compatible with or even friendly to
the spirit of philosophy?
Argument for Reason
The critical point with respect to any revelation is its pretension to truth. But
how can one determine the truth of Qur’anic revelation? How can one evaluate
Muhammad’s claim to be the Prophet of God? The usual, traditional answer
to the question of how to establish a genuine revelation was by miracles. If,
in the case of some revelation which claims to be genuine, we establish that a
certain phenomenon in its favor is miraculous we can establish its genuineness. This means that in the case of the Qur’an one must investigate whether
there is any miracle which proves its divine origin. Traditionally the Qur’an
itself is presented as Muhammad’s highest miracle. This claim is based on
some passages in the Qur’an in which God demands the unbelievers who
22
Strauss, “Progress or Return?,” 109.
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“have doubts about the revelation” sent to Muhammad to “produce a single
sura like it”; God is certain that they cannot do this (Q 2:23–24, 10:38). God
assures the unbelievers that even if “all mankind and jinn came together to
produce something like this Qur’an, they could not produce anything like
it” (Q 17:88). God tells us that any imitation of the Qur’an would have inconsistencies, while there is no inconsistency in the Qur’an (Q 4:82). However,
what is actually meant by these claims is not as clear as one might think. God
challenges the unbelievers to bring a “similar” sura; but it is not clear what
“similar” means.23 Does it mean a text as eloquent, concise, or fluent as the
Qur’an? But such qualities seem to be a matter of taste: some might find other
speeches, poems, or rhymed prose more beautiful than the Qur’an24 or even
question the Qur’an’s literary value.25 The Qur’an’s claim to be inimitable by
the Arabs, a people famous for its poetic genius, is puzzling to say the least;
it seems that something other than pure literary quality is meant here, and
later generations simply invented the story of the Qur’an’s superior literary
characteristics to make some sense of this claim. In other words, the Qur’an
might mean that its content is superior to any other writing’s. However, this
also depends on what we find in the Qur’an and our evaluation of its worth.
Apart from the Qur’an’s miraculous character, is there any other miracle
which can vouch for the truth of Islamic revelation? Muhammad’s life and
his doings, as the mouthpiece of revelation, are understandably crucial here.
The Qur’an accepts the concept of miracles and reports many miracles associated with Abraham (Q 2:260, 21:68–70), Moses (Q 17:101, 26:63–68) and
Jesus (Q 2:87, 3:46, 5:110–14). In Moses’s confrontation with the Pharaoh,
Moses calls his miracles “something convincing” (Q 26:30). Unbelievers also
recognize the importance of miracles for establishing the truth of revelation
and there are numerous Qur’anic passages in which the unbelievers demand
miracles from Muhammad (e.g., Q 2:118; 3:183, 4:153, 6:7–8, 6:37, 6:91, 7:105,
11:12, 11:53, 13:7, 13:27, 14:10, 15:7–14, 20:133, 21:5, 26:154, 29:50). There is
even a somewhat amusing passage in which God challenges the unbelievers to produce evidence for their unbelief (Q 27:64)! In a word, the Qur’an
unequivocally recognizes the decisive importance of miracles for identifying
This point is also made by Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi. See Abu Hatim Al-razi, The Proofs of
Prophecy, trans. Tarif Khalidi (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2011), 167.
23
24
Ibid.
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, ed. Carl Niemeyer (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1966), 64; Maxime Rodinson, Muhammad: Prophet of Islam (London:
Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2002), 92; Theodor Nöldeke, The History of the Qur’an, ed. Wolfgang H.
Behn (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 90.
25
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
413
a genuine revelation and deciding whether a scripture is indeed the Word
of God. However, this recognition is also clearly contrasted with the lack of
miracles in the case of Muhammad. Muslim historians have attributed many
other miracles to the Prophet of Islam, for example that he split the moon or
was one night transported to Jerusalem.26 However, these alleged miracles are
either entirely absent from the Qur’an and depend wholly on Traditions, or
the Qur’anic passages on which they are based are very ambiguous. In fact,
the Qur’an’s account of Muhammad’s prophethood is clearly in contradiction
with traditional accounts which attribute miracles to the Prophet of Islam.27
The Qur’an denies that Muhammad has performed any miracle (Q 6:35, 6:50,
6:109, 15:7–14, 26:4, 29:50, 30:58, 41:14) and argues that it is God who decides
whether miracles should be produced or not. It also reminds the reader and
the Prophet that miracles were not effective in the past and many people
abandoned prophets despite their miracles (Q 3:126, 6:7–8, 6:109, 17:59, 28:48,
35:25). The Qur’an rejects the unbelievers’ request for miracles comparable to
those “signs…given to Moses” by reminding them that despite those miracles
Moses was not believed by his followers (Q 28:48).28
Why is it that, unlike other prophets in the Qur’an, Muhammad does not
perform miracles? It is said in the Qur’an that “there was a Scripture for every
age,” and in former times prophets performed miracles (Q 13:38). Does this
mean that the age of miracles has passed? Are Muhammad’s “modern” contemporaries less open to the possibility of, and therefore less likely to believe
in, miracles? Are they living in the postbiblical “disenchanted world”? Whatever one might think about these suggestions, there is clearly a general push
towards a remarkable demystification of prophecy in the Qur’an. As was
26
For a traditional list see Al-razi, The Proofs of Prophecy, 145ff.
There is a passage in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari in which a Muslim scholar argues that “miracles have
been performed by [Muhammad], but they have not been offered as proof for accepting his Law”
(1:7). According to this participant in the dialogue, the only miracle which proves the genuineness of
Muhammad’s mission is the Qur’an. The king of Khazars refuses to accept the miraculous character
of the Qur’an because “a non-Arab like myself will not be able to recognize its miraculous and
extraordinary character” (1:6). One should bear in mind that this claim is made in a work written in
Arabic! It is possible that Halevi is trying to make the same point about Islam that I am making here,
that to claim that the language of the Qur’an is miraculous is puzzling and Muhammad did not base
his prophethood on miracles. (Quotations are from Barry S. Kogan’s unpublished translation.)
27
The passage reminds us of Edward Gibbon who made this ironical comment: “The contemporaries
of Moses and Joshua had beheld with careless indifference the most amazing miracles. Under the pressure of every calamity, the belief of those miracles has preserved the Jews of a later period from the
universal contagion of idolatry; and in contradiction to every known principle of the human mind,
that singular people seems to have yielded a stronger and more ready assent to the traditions of their
remote ancestors than to the evidence of their own senses” (Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire [London: Harper & Brothers, 1835], 1:178).
28
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mentioned, the Qur’an does not deny the miracles of the previous prophets,
however, it insists that the prophets in general and Muhammad in particular
are nothing but human beings. Repeatedly Jesus is identified as the “son of
Mary” (Q 4:157, 5:17, 43:57, 61:6) to emphatically bring it to mind that Jesus
was only a mortal man and not the Son of God. It is said that Jesus and Mary
“both ate food” like other mortals (Q 5:75). Muhammad is also described as
“only a mortal like you” (Q 41:6, 6:50, 6:91, 7:63, 7:69, 7:188), apparently not
elevated above human weaknesses. The ordinary character of Muhammad’s
life mentioned in the Qur’an is quite remarkable. Even the unbelievers were
surprised that according to the Qur’an the prophets are “men like us” (Q
14:10). It is not therefore surprising that later generations of Muslims tried to
find extraordinary things in the Prophet’s life, as if even they could not easily
accept this aspect of Muhammad’s mission and felt something was lacking.
The absence of an appeal to miracles does not mean that the Qur’an takes
belief for granted. Instead, it tries to justify itself and to convince its readers;
it is an argumentative writing. It argues for the unicity of God by saying that
if there existed several deities the whole world would have perished because
of their conflict (Q 21:21–22, 23:91). It justifies charity (zakat) by explaining that it prevents the accumulation of wealth and contributes towards its
partial redistribution among the Muslim community (Q 9:60, 59:7). God
refutes the unbelievers’ denial of the possibility of Resurrection by reminding
them of their birth (Q 36:77–83). One is often struck by the amount of space
dedicated to disputation and polemical apologetic. The Qur’an “regularly
addresses actual or implicit antagonists.”29 Many have found “full arguments
with premises and conclusions, antecedents and consequents, constructions
a fortiori, commands supported by justification, conclusions produced by
rule-based reasoning, comparisons, contrasts, and many other patterns.”30
From the polemical nature of the Qur’an, Wansborough concludes that the
Qur’an was born in highly sectarian conditions.31 One might question Wansborough’s conclusion because the same thing can be said about the New
Testament but one rarely finds such an argumentative spirit in the latter.
Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “The Construction of a Qur’anic Commonplace,” in Myths, Historical
Archetypes and Symbolic Figures in Arabic Literature: Towards a New Hermeneutic Approach, ed.
Angelika Neuwirth (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999), 163; George Anastaplo, “Islamic Thought: The Koran,”
in But Not Philosophy: Seven Introductions to Non-Western Thought, ed. George Anastaplo (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2002), 182.
29
Rosalind Ward Gwynne, Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning in the Qur’an (London: Routledge,
2004), x.
30
31
Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu.
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
415
Furthermore, this argumentative nature of the Qur’an is clearly related to the
absence of miracles, while in the New Testament miracles of Jesus abound.
Muhammad obstinately refrains from relying on any personal miracle or
extraordinary sign to prove his prophecy.32 The Qur’an asks the Prophet to
“call to the way of your God,” not by performing miracles, but “with wisdom [hikma] and kind exhortation [mou‘ezeh] and disputation [jadal]” (Q
16:125).33 It seems that the Qur’an intends to convince its readers of the truth
of its claims by its constant appeal to reason, that is, by relying on natural and
verifiable statements characteristic of philosophy rather than by relying on
supernatural miracles to support indemonstrable and unverifiable assertions
of revelation. The Qur’an asks the unbelievers to observe the natural world
and argues that these observations, coupled with reasoning and reflection,
would lead one to accept its message. It seems that the main argument for the
truth of the Qur’an is its reasonableness.34
The Qur’an replaces the experience of miracles with the experience of
Creation. The amazement derived from the experience of nature and its intricacies is advanced as the proof of the truth of the Qur’anic revelation. In
innumerable verses the Qur’an depicts nature and its complex details in order
to prove the truth of Muhammad’s revelation. It is as if the Qur’an believes
There might be a link between the absence of miracles and the composition of the Qur’an. The
order of the Qur’anic text, or more precisely the apparent lack thereof, has preoccupied the mind
of readers for centuries. However, an observation might lead us to suspect that there is some order
in the current arrangement. Although the number of verses differs slightly from one edition to
another, according to the most common view there are 6236 verses in the Qur’an. This means that
the central verses are 186th and 187th of sura 26, entitled “The Poets.” These two verses are part of a
dialogue between the unbelievers and the Prophet in which the unbelievers call the latter “nothing
but a man like us,” a poet. They demand that he perform some miracles to prove his divine mission.
Does this mean that the question of Muhammad’s lack of miracles was the “central” preoccupation
of the original editors of the Qur’an? Did they believe that this is the most important teaching of the
Islamic revelation? For observations about the meaning of the current arrangement see also Anastaplo, “Islamic Thought: The Koran,” 209n58; Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the
Glorious Koran (London: Penguin Books, 1991), xxviii. For other examples of possible numerological
passages with esoteric meaning see Q 74:30–31 and also the discussions about the numerological
importance of the “abbreviated letters” (muqattiat) placed at the beginning of certain suras.
32
Averroes interpreted this verse as God commanding the Prophet to teach men differently: some
by philosophy, some by preaching, and some by dialectic. The same terminology was used by Muslim
philosophers to describe Aristotle’s classification of speeches as demonstrative, rhetorical, and dialectical. See Averroes, The Book of the Decisive Treatise determining the Connection between the Law and
Wisdom, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2001), 8, Müller
7; Arthur J. Arberry, Revelation and Reason in Islam (London: Taylor & Francis, 2013), 15. According
to Fakhry, it was this command “which, following the period of conquest, was historically at the basis
of the debates with Christians” (Majid Fakhry, “Philosophy and the Qur’an,” in Encyclopaedia of the
Qur’an, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe [Leiden: Brill, 2001–6], 4:71).
33
34
Muhammad Abu-Hamdiyyah, The Qur’an: An Introduction (London: Taylor & Francis, 2002), 36.
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that men’s amazement before nature would lead them to faith. It repeatedly
argues that “there truly are signs in the creation of the heavens and earth,
and in the alternation of night and day, for those with understanding…who
reflect on the creation of the heavens and earth” (Q 3:190–91, 2:164, 6:97,
7:57, 10:67). Men are asked to “reflect,” “reason,” and “observe” (Q 13:3, 13:4,
14:25, 22:73, 24: 39–40, 25:50). It seems that for the Qur’an the faculties of
observation and reasoning are the only ones needed for discerning the “right
way” and accepting Islam. To the Arabs and many other people who do not
believe in the Resurrection of the Dead, the Qur’an gives arguments from
history, nature, and logic (Q 22:5–10, 36:76–83, 56:47–96). It is in fact the
Qur’anic method to argue with its readers. Apparently, it does not refuse to
establish its claim before the tribunal of human reason, it even demands it. To
Muhammad’s supposedly Jewish and Christian detractors who asked for his
miraculous signs of prophecy, questioned the truth of his mission, and made
mention of his ordinary life (Q 20:133, 25:7–9, 30:58), the Qur’an regularly
responds that the creation of earth and heaven, what grows in nature, the generation of living beings, the existence of male and female, and other natural
phenomena are signs enough for the truth of his prophecy (Q 26:6, 30:17ff.).
The Qur’an is preoccupied with natural phenomena and generation, and one
can observe a process of substituting natural phenomena for miracles in it.
These phenomena are not miraculous; they are not supernatural but instead
manifestations of God in the natural world. It is as if in the Qur’an reflection
on and observation of nature are the equivalent of witnessing miracles. The
same word (aya, “sign”) that is used for natural phenomena (Q 57:17, 30:22ff.)
is also used for miracles (Q 7:73, 17:101, 26:67, 26:121, 26:154, 26:158), and
even for the verses of the Qur’an (Q 28:59). The Qur’an goes so far as to call
the natural knowledge of bees “revelation” (waḥy): “And your lord revealed to
the bee, saying ‘Build yourselves houses in the mountains and trees and what
people construct’” (Q 16:68). If the natural knowledge of the bees is called a
revelation, one might ask, are the revelations sent down to Muhammad also
a kind of natural knowledge?
Human Knowledge in the Qur’anic Stories
It is not only from explicit passages in the Qur’an that one can discover its
view of natural knowledge, the knowledge characteristic of philosophy. The
same is true of the Bible, which above all educates the readers and transmits
its message through its many stories. One biblical story that is particularly
important for our study is the story of the Fall. It has been argued that the
story of the Fall in the Bible is the clearest critique of the freestanding and
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
417
autonomous knowledge characteristic of philosophy. 35 Through this story,
the Bible confronts us with the fundamental alternative to the autonomous
activity of philosophy, namely, obedience to God and His revelation. In the
biblical telling, there are two parts of the story of the Fall that are particularly
important for this antiphilosophical interpretation: First, the forbidden tree
is specifically called “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and God
warns Adam that if he eats from it, he “will certainly die.” Second, the serpent of the Bible tempts Adam and Eve by saying that if they eat from the tree
“your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”
(Gen. 2:17, 3:5). But the Qur’anic version of the story of the Fall has significant
differences from its biblical counterpart and gives a different account of these
two aspects of the story. In the Qur’anic version, God commands Adam and
Eve not to go “near this tree or you shall become wrongdoers.” The Qur’an
does not mention any link between the forbidden tree and knowledge; the
tree is not even named. Furthermore, Satan in the Qur’an tempts Adam
and Eve by saying that “your Lord only forbade you this tree to prevent you
becoming angels or immortals” (Q 7:19–20). In other words, the Qur’anic
Adam and Eve are not tempted by the prospect of acquiring knowledge; they
are misled because of their desire to become angels or immortals. In Genesis,
the original disobedience of man is due to his desire to acquire the knowledge of good and evil. The grounds of his disobedience consisted in gaining
autonomous knowledge that man possesses by himself, independently of
God. In the Qur’anic version of the story a critique of autonomous human
knowledge is not implied and the motivation behind the original disobedience is not the desire for knowledge. The critique of autonomous rational
inquiry is not the theme of the Qur’anic story.
However, one might argue that the Qur’anic story of Moses and Khidr
depicts the antagonism of reason and revelation in the Muslim scripture. In
this story (Q 18:65–82), Moses meets “one of Our servants,” a man to whom
“We had given knowledge of Our own.” This man is not named but Muslim
traditions identify him as Khidr. Moses asks for permission to accompany
Khidr so that he can learn what he “has been taught” by God. At first Khidr
resists but owing to Moses’s persistence, Khidr accepts on the condition that
Moses not question him about what he does. On their way Khidr damages
a boat, kills a young man, and repairs a wall. Each time Moses protests and
asks for the reason for Khidr’s surprising acts and each time Khidr reminds
Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 372–73; Leon Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading
Genesis (New York: Free Press, 2003), 51; Robert Sacks, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen, 1990), 65.
35
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Moses of his promise not to question him. On the third time Khidr loses
patience and tells him that they should part company. But he first explains
“the meaning of the things” Moses could not bear with patience. The message
of the story seems to be that one must follow God’s servant without questioning his actions. It is the most important anecdote that can be provided as
evidence of the opposition of the Qur’an to the spirit of philosophy. Supposedly, according to this story, a Muslim is meant to live in perfect obedience
and not seek the knowledge of good and evil himself. However, the moral
of the story is not entirely clear. It is remarkable that even Moses, one of the
prophets, or in fact the prophet of God in the Qur’an (mentioned five hundred and two times, more than any other prophet) who was given “wisdom”
by God (Q 26:21), lacks the knowledge accessible only to people like Khidr. In
other words, the truly divine knowledge of Khidr seems to be different from
the wisdom of prophets like Moses, and if a divine man like Moses lacks such
knowledge, how can one expect ordinary human beings to possess it? Are we
meant to imitate Khidr, or Moses?
There is one other Qur’anic story which also manifests the difference
between the biblical view of philosophy and the Qur’anic perspective: in the
first chapter of Genesis the divinity of the heavenly bodies, one of the most
widespread ideas of the philosophical cosmology, is denied.36 The depreciation of the heaven and the denial of the divinity of the heavenly bodies is also
present in the Qur’an: “Do not bow down in worship to the sun or the moon,
but bow down to God who created them” (Q 41:37). However, the idea that
the heavenly bodies are not divine is presented in the Bible as one of the
things that God by His grace has revealed exclusively to His chosen people:
“And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun,
and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven
to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto
all nations under the whole heaven” (Deut. 4:19). In other words, this biblical knowledge, the depreciation of heaven, is not based on any argument: it
is simply asserted and we are simply told that heaven is not divine. On the
contrary, there are a few passages in the Qur’an which seem to encourage
cosmological contemplation. The God of the Qur’an swears by “the raised
canopy” (i.e., the sky) (Q 52:5) and by “the positions of the stars” and He tells
the reader that it is “a mighty oath, if you only knew” (Q 56:75). Furthermore, the idea of the divinity of the heavenly bodies is refuted in the Qur’an
by arguments and through the story of Abraham. The latter is depicted as
36
Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” 369.
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
419
engaged in cosmological observation and contemplation of heaven. Observing the setting of the sun, the moon, and the stars Abraham concludes that
they cannot be divine and he therefore ascends from worshiping the heavenly
bodies to monotheism.37 In other words, Abraham in the Qur’an arrives at
the conclusion that the heavenly bodies are not divine through the use of his
autonomous reason (Q 6:76–79).
The Qur’an and Islamic Philosophy
The above observations lead us to question the status of the Qur’an as a simple
work of revelation and make that status quite ambiguous: it is not uniquely
based on supranational knowledge and its relationship with human reason
and the philosophic way of life is vague. In the history of Islamic thought
many thinkers struggled to clarify the relationship between the Qur’an
and the tradition of philosophy coming from the Greeks. Significantly, the
nonmiraculous character of the Qur’an, its argumentative character, and its
ambiguous relationship with natural reason have put their imprint on their
efforts. Before the emergence of Islamic philosophy, the debate about the
relationship between reason and revelation appeared in the conflict between
the so-called traditionalist and rationalist theologians. The rationalists have
often been charged by their traditionalist opponents with holding the view
that men do not need revelation, that everything can be known through
reason.38 It seems that at least some of the rationalists believed that all the
knowledge available in scripture is also available to unassisted human reason
(provided it is given time and applies itself to knowing them) and that there
is nothing essentially suprarational about Qur’anic teachings; although it is
difficult to find such a radical position explicitly stated in their surviving
works.39 However, in treating this subject, it is important to take the problem
The reasoning seems to be this: the celestial bodies are chained to a prescribed course of movement
and lack the freedom characteristic of a superior Being. Cf. Kass, Beginning of Wisdom, 35, and Genesis 2. In the Bible, this fact is depicted or hinted at by God.
37
Richard C. Martin, Mark Woodward, and Dwi S. Atmaja, Defenders of Reason in Islam:
Mu’tazililism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997), 12, 75, 187–88;
George F. Hourani, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007), 18; Oliver Leaman, An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 147; Umar F. Abd-Allah, “Theological Dimensions of Islamic Law,” in The
Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, ed. Tim Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 250.
38
“Most Mu’tazilite theologians…assumed that everything is available to the unassisted human
mind, provided the human mind is given time and applies itself to knowing them. They argued that
prophecy and revelation are necessary because humans need to be instructed about things required
for their well-being in this world and the next. Although some humans could know these things if
39
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of persecution into account. It would be unreasonable to believe that if any
thinker held such radical views he would openly advertise them. In any case
the traditionalists firmly denied the radical rationalistic view. Their position is best presented in the comments of Malik ibn Anas on the Qur’anic
passages which speak of God “sitting upon the throne” (e.g., Q 7:54, 20:5).
Reportedly Malik said that “the sitting is known, its modality is unknown.
Belief in it is an obligation and raising questions regarding it is a heresy.”40
In other words, the knowledge provided by the Qur’an, according to Malik,
is not accessible to human reason and must be accepted solely on faith. This
approach ultimately led to an extreme form of literalism, found for instance
in Ibn Taymiyyah. Reportedly the latter said during a sermon that “God
comes down from heaven to earth, just as I am coming down now,” upon
which he came down from his pulpit.41
The reign of rationalist theologians was quite brief. However, with the rise
of the systematic tradition of classical Islamic philosophy, the idea that the
Qur’an contained rational knowledge gained a new impetus. One of the most
important figures to discuss the relationship between the Qur’an and reason
was al-Kindi. He discusses this question in two works in which he explicitly
quotes and discusses Qur’anic verses. The first is The Prostration of the Outermost Body in which he comments on the beginning of Sura ar-Rahman (Q
55:6). In this sura the stars are depicted as prostrating themselves; commenting
on this passage, al-Kindi argues that the Qur’an may be “understood wholly
through reasonable deductions”42 and shows how this Qur’anic passage, if read
figuratively, is in harmony with philosophical cosmology. He discusses the
same subject in On the Quantity of Aristotle’s Books where he makes contrasts
between the human and divine sciences. According to al-Kindi, human sciences are acquired through study and effort and are lower in rank than divine
science which can be acquired without study or effort and in no time. The
knowledge of the prophets is an example of divine science; they know through
given sufficient time and mental power and application, there was at the time of the coming down
of revelation a disparity between what humans knew and what they needed to know. What humans
know at any time is subject to a great many accidents, and in any case not all humans know what they
need to know well enough to act upon it. Revelation is an act of grace that removes these accidental
shortcomings rather than an imparting of information about things whose very nature is such that the
unassisted human mind, by its very nature, has no access to them” (Muhsin Mahdi, Alfarabi and the
Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001], 45).
40
Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (London: Longman, 1983), xvii.
41
Arberry, Revelation and Reason in Islam, 22.
Al-Kindi, The Philosophical Works of Al-Kindi, trans. Peter Pormann and Peter Adamson (Karachi:
OUP Pakistan, 2012), 175, Rashed & Jolivet 177.
42
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
421
the will of God who bestows upon them this knowledge “without study, effort,
or inquiry, without the methods of mathematics or logic, and without time.”43
To elucidate his point al-Kindi gives the example of a Qur’anic passage in
which God argues for the possibility of the Resurrection of the Dead (Q 36:7982) and contends that the philosophers cannot provide an argument similar
to the Qur’an’s “in brevity, clarity, unerringness and comprehensiveness.”44
However, he then proceeds to give a detailed philosophical explanation of the
meaning of the Qur’anic passage. What is interesting in these two cases is that
in both al-Kindi seems to be saying that there is nothing in the Qur’an inherently inaccessible to human reason and philosophy: the human and divine
sciences both arrive at the same knowledge, and this is why there seems to
be an agreement among commentators that al-Kindi believed in a perfect
agreement of philosophy and revelation.45 However, three points should be
mentioned here. First, how can al-Kindi call the Qur’anic knowledge clear
and comprehensive when one needs an elaborate and complex philosophical
commentary to explain the figurative meaning of words in a short passage?
Second, it seems that al-Kindi is aware of some conflict between the Qur’anic
view of the Creation and the philosophic idea of the eternity of the world,
although he only alludes to this problem.46 Third, there remains the problem
of the necessity of revelation: if the Qur’an and philosophy both teach the same
truth, why do men need revelation? This is a major criticism which Alfarabi
also puts into the mouth of a group of theologians: “were revelation to provide
a human being only with what he knew and could perceive by his intellect…
people…would have no need for prophecy or revelation.”47 As we shall see,
later Muslim philosophers struggled with this problem. As for al-Kindi, his
response seems to be that the Qur’an is more clear and comprehensive than
philosophic arguments, although as I mentioned one can doubt that this
response is entirely convincing.
Ibid., 286, Guidi & Walzer 372–73. The same point is also made in On the Reason Why the Higher
Atmosphere Is Cold (ibid., 210–11, Abu Rida 93).
43
44
Al-Kindi, Philosophical Works, 287, Guidi & Walzer 373.
Peter Adamson, Al-Kindi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 44; Richard Walzer, Greek into
Arabic: Essays on Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 196; William
Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985), 40.
45
Al-Kindi, Philosophical Works, 287–88, Guidi & Walzer 373–74; Charles E. Butterworth, “Al-Kindi
and the Beginning of Islamic Political Philosophy,” in The Political Aspects of Islamic Philosophy:
Essays in Honor of Muhsin S. Mahdi, ed. Charles E. Butterworth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1992), 30–31.
46
47
Alfarabi, “Enumeration of the Sciences,” 81, V.5, Uthman Amin 109.
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While al-Kindi quotes Qur’anic verses and explains their philosophic
content, Alfarabi, arguably the most influential Islamic philosopher, systematically avoids speaking about Islam and prefers to present his views on
religion in general.48 However, the way he uses traditional Islamic concepts
like “the trustworthy spirit” (al-ruh al-amin) and “the holy spirit” (ruh alqudus)49 and his description of the virtuous regime and its ruler who receives
revelation50 and whose tradition is followed by later generations51 show the
Islamic context of his thought.52 What is remarkable in Alfarabi’s view of
the reason-revelation distinction is that by introducing the concept of the
philosopher-prophet-ruler in his political philosophy, it seems that he practically denies any difference between the knowledge of philosopher and the
prophetic knowledge of the Qur’an. According to Alfarabi, the ruler who
perfects his rational faculty enters into contact with the active intellect, the
angel of revelation: “he is the one of whom it ought [yanbaghī] to be said that
he receives revelation.”53 Alfarabi also imagines the possibility of a prophet
without philosophical qualifications, although it is not clear whether this
is only a kind of thought experiment—as Mahdi puts it, “a psychological
distinction…useful for understanding the nature of both prophecy and philosophy”—or a real possibility.54 At any rate, even the second account would
not necessarily mean that the unphilosophical prophet has access to knowledge that is in principle unavailable to philosophers. More importantly, the
dominant image of revelation in Alfarabi remains the philosopher-prophetruler, the “perfect human being.”55 It seems that Alfarabi’s view of prophecy
48
It seems that by avoiding Islam specifically Alfarabi suggests that for his virtuous regime the particularities of religion are not important: “it may be possible for the religions of virtuous nations and
virtuous cities to differ even if they all pursue the very same happiness” (Alfarabi, “Political Regime,”
in The Political Writings, vol. 2, Political Regime and Summary of Plato’s “Laws,” trans. Charles E. Butterworth [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015], 75, sec. 90, Fauzi Najjar 86).
49
Ibid., 30, sec. 3, Fauzi Najjar 32. Cf. Q 2:87, 2:253, 5:113, 16:102, 26:193.
Alfarabi, “Political Regime,” 69, sec. 80, Fauzi Najjar 79; Alfarabi, “Book of Religion,” in The Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts, 111–12, sec. 26–27, Muhsin Mahdi 64.
50
Alfarabi, “Selected Aphorisms,” in The Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts,
37, aph. 58, Fauzi Najjar 66. This is the idea behind the Islamic concept of Sunna, the traditions and
practices of the Prophet that are considered models to be followed by Muslims.
51
For a discussion of other Islamic concepts which inform Alfarabi’s thought see Majid Fakhry,
Al-Farabi, Founder of Islamic Neoplatonism: His Life, Works and Influence (Oxford: Oneworld, 2002),
101–17.
52
Alfarabi, “Political Regime,” 69, sec. 80, Fauzi Najjar 79. Cf. ibid., 30, sec. 3, Fauzi Najjar 32: “Of the
active intellect, it ought [yanbaghī] to be said that it is the trustworthy spirit and the holy spirit”; and
ibid., 29, sec. 2, Fauzi Najjar 31: “The first [cause] is what ought [yanbaghī] to be believed to be the deity.”
53
54
Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, 135.
55
See the description of “the king in truth” in Alfarabi, “Selected Aphorisms,” 37, aph. 58, Fauzi Najjar 66.
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
423
is that which Maimonides identifies as the opinion of falasifa: “prophecy is
a certain perfection in the nature of man. This perfection is not achieved in
any individual from among men except after a training.” Maimonides distinguishes this position from that of others (apparently traditionalists) who
consider prophecy to be a power given by God to any man He wishes regardless of his intellectual acumen.56 In the same vein, for Alfarabi, a prophet must
be a trained philosopher who has perfected all aspects of philosophy: “the first
ruler of the virtuous city must already have thorough cognizance of theoretical
philosophy; for he cannot understand anything pertaining to God’s, may He
be exalted, governance of the world so as to follow it except from that source.”57
He goes so far as to say that “any religion in which the first type of opinions
[i.e., the theoretical opinions] do not comprise what a human being can ascertain either from himself or by demonstration and in which there is no likeness
of anything he can ascertain in one of these two ways is an errant religion.”58
In other words, it seems that for Alfarabi, all genuine religious knowledge is
accessible to human reason, and the truth of the theoretical views of any given
religion should be ascertainable by human reason; there is nothing essentially
suprarational about the knowledge derived from revelation.
Taken literally, Alfarabi’s understanding of prophecy amounts to saying
that Muhammad was a philosopher, or as Averroes puts it, “every prophet is
a sage [hakim].”59 As I mentioned, Alfarabi is curiously silent about Islam and
its relationship with the philosophical tradition originated by the Greeks.
However, he writes that “religion is an imitation of philosophy”60 and makes
the curious remark that “philosophy is prior to religion in time.”61 He also
traces one of the causes of the conflict between philosophy and religion to
the fact that sometimes followers of a religion are ignorant of the philosophic
origin of their religion.62 He thereby gives the impression that he believes a
56
Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), II.32; Al-Kindi, Philosophical Works, 286, Guidi & Walzer 372.
Alfarabi, “Book of Religion,” 113, sec. 27, Muhsin Mahdi 66. For “the first ruler” as the Prophet see
ibid., 111–12, sec. 26–27, Muhsin Mahdi 64.
57
58
Ibid., 97, sec. 4, Muhsin Mahdi 46.
Averroes, Tahafut Al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), trans. Simon Van Den Bergh,
3rd repr. ed. (London: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2008), 361, Bouygues 583. Sometimes the Qur’an reads
like a work written by a bookish person: “on that Day, We shall roll up the skies as a writer rolls up his
scrolls” (Q 21:104, 52:2, 96:3–5).
59
Alfarabi, “The Attainment of Happiness,” in Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Muhsin Mahdi
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 44, sec. 55, Hyderabad 40.
60
61
Ibid., 45, sec. 55, Hydarabad 41.
62
Alfarabi, Al-Farabi’s Book of Letters (Kitāb Al-Ḥurūf): Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, ed.
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philosophical tradition has had some influence on the formation of Islam. It
is not clear whether he has something like the Platonic influence on Christianity in mind63 or he is making a much more radical claim, that Muhammad
himself was influenced by a philosophic tradition. In this regard, it might also
be significant that Alfarabi’s major political works (The Virtuous City and
Political Regime) bear little resemblance to philosophic writings; they consist
of statements about God, world, and society without any trace of argument
or demonstration. Is Alfarabi imitating in his time what he believed Muhammad did before him? As the representative of the Platonic tradition, Alfarabi
must have been familiar with Plato’s depiction of ancient philosophers who
used “arts of concealment” and disguised themselves with different garbs
including that of prophecy.64 Did Alfarabi believe Muhammad was an Arab
philosopher who concealed his teaching under the guise of a revealed religion?
It is not impossible that Muslim Platonists saw some parallelisms between the
life of Muhammad and that of Socrates, the archphilosopher, even though
Muhammad, as he is depicted in traditional biographies, was not of course a
philosopher. However, there are a few things in the Qur’an that some readers might interpret as marks of philosophy. Apart from the argumentative
nature of the Qur’an, its cosmological themes, and Muhammad’s lack of miracles, there is also the fact that in a society where people identify themselves
with their forefathers, Muhammad regularly criticizes the ancestors of the
unbelievers as misguided people and asks their descendants to forsake their
errant customs and beliefs. Unbelievers often justify their idolatry by saying
that they are following the ways of their fathers (Q 2:170, 5:104, 7:28, 7:70,
21:53, 23:24, 26:74), and criticize Muhammad for his effort in turning them
away from the faith of their fathers (Q 10:78, 11:62, 14:10, 26:137; cf. Moses
in Q 26:26, 28:36, 43:22). The Qur’anic critique of the ancestral resembles the
philosophic rejection of the ancestral in favor of the good.65 Muhammad’s
relationship with the youth might also remind someone of the accusation
brought against Socrates of corrupting the youth.66
Muhsin Mahdi (Beirut: Dar El-Mashreq, 1969), 155, sec. 149.
Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, 221. For a version of this theory
that argues that the Hebrew Bible was written in accordance with the detailed instructions found in
Plato’s Laws see Russell E. Gmirkin, Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (London: Taylor &
Francis, 2016).
63
64
Plato, Protagoras 316d4–317a; Sophist 216c5–d8.
65
Aristotle, Politics 1269a1–3.
Plato, Apology 24b–26a. Most of Muhammad’s early followers were the youth of Mecca. It is
reported that one of Muhammad’s followers even offered to go and kill his father who was one of the
Meccan leaders inimical to the Prophet (Rodinson, Muhammad: Prophet of Islam, 184).
66
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
425
However, the question that now imposes itself is: did Muslim philosophers
like Alfarabi really believe that Muhammad was a philosopher?67 Dealing
with such a question, as I mentioned, one must keep in mind that revealing one’s heretical views in closed societies amounts to putting one’s life in
danger. Persecution has understandably forced philosophers to conceal their
unorthodox views and also to defend their activity by any means necessary.
For instance, Alfarabi tries to provide an Eastern lineage for philosophy to
avoid the charge of following an alien type of practice coming from the heathen Greeks.68 One other way by which Muslim philosophers tried to justify
their fascination with the foreign discipline of philosophy was by invoking many passages in the Qur’an in which wisdom (hikma) is mentioned,
sometimes alongside scripture (e.g., Q 3:81). Naming wisdom and scripture
together gives the impression that they both make the same knowledge available to human beings, that they are two parallel ways to acquire the same
knowledge. Sometimes wisdom is presented as a quality of God (Q 2:240,
2:260, 3:6, 3:18, 3:126, 4:11, 4:17, 4:26, 4:92, 4:104, 4:111, 4:165, 4:170, 5:38, 6:83,
8:10, 24:18, 24:58, 27:6) and sometimes as that of prophets. For instance, Sura
31 of the Qur’an entitled Luqman is dedicated to a prophet known for his
hikma.69 In the Qur’an wisdom is often described as a unique blessing (e.g., Q
2:269). This same Qur’anic term (hikma) was used by Muslim philosophers
to mean philosophy. To call Muhammad a philosopher, a hakim, might have
been a way to legitimize philosophy in a hostile environment—but we must
suspend our judgment on this question for now.
Averroes’s Decisive Treatise represents the most important effort to legitimize philosophy in Islam. Averroes argues that the activity of philosophy
is not prohibited in Islam. He defines philosophy as the “reflection upon
existing things and consideration of them insofar as they are an indication of the Artisan.”70 Pointing to numerous verses in which believers are
commanded to reflect about the world, Averroes concludes that the study
of philosophy is commanded by God. He also maintains the parity of religious and philosophic knowledge and argues that philosophic knowledge
is in harmony with religious knowledge. For him what is set down in the
Qur’an is in perfect harmony with the results of the demonstrative reflection
67
Brague, La Loi de Dieu, 198.
Alfarabi, “The Attainment of Happiness,” 43, sec. 53, Hyderabad 38. Cf. the remarkable defense of
philosophy in Al-Kindi, Philosophical Works, 11–12, Rashed & Jolivet 12–15.
68
69
Nasr, “Quran and Hadith as Source and Inspiration,” 73.
70
Averroes, Decisive Treatise, 1, Müller 1.
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characteristic of philosophy. In the event of an apparent conflict between the
Qur’anic teaching and philosophy, Averroes contends that the philosopher
must engage in a figurative interpretation of scripture owing to “the difference in people’s innate dispositions and the variance in their innate capacities
for assent.” Recognizing this, the Qur’an addresses different people with different styles.71 According to Averroes, people vary with respect to the degree
of “assent” they are able to achieve. Some assent by demonstrative, some by
dialectical, and some by rhetorical statements72 and Averroes thinks that the
Qur’an addresses different people by these different methods. In other words,
Averroes distinguishes between the few who are capable of philosophy and
the majority who need religion; the latter lack the rational capacity needed to
go beyond the surface meaning of scripture to discover the inner meanings
of the Qur’an which is compatible with the discoveries of philosophy.73 What
sets Averroes apart from al-Kindi is the fact that the former argues for the
superiority of philosophic demonstration to dialectical and rhetorical statements of the Qur’an. Therefore, the necessity of the Qur’an is not based, as
in the case of al-Kindi, on its unquestionable clarity and comprehensiveness,
but on the fact that it makes the truth accessible to those who cannot know
it through demonstration. However, if Averroes is right that the Qur’anic
knowledge is an inferior version of philosophic knowledge, one might doubt
that it can be of much use to philosophers as a source of knowledge as distinguished from a useful political instrument, a civil religion in the proper
sense of the term necessary for the education of the many.74 In his refutation
Ibid., 9. This idea is also found in others: “Since it is difficult for the public to understand these
things in themselves and the way they exist, instructing them about these things is sought by other
ways—and those are the ways of representation. So these things are represented to each group or
nation by things of which they are more cognizant” (Alfarabi, “Political Regime,” 75, sec. 90, Fauzi
Najjar 86). See also the quotation from Avicenna’s Risala al-adhawiyya fi amr al-maad in Daniel De
Smet and Meryem Sebti, “Avicenna’s Philosophical Approach to the Qur’an in the Light of His Tafsīr
Sūrat Al-Ikhlāṣ,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 11, no. 2 (2010): 135.
71
72
Averroes, Decisive Treatise, 8, Müller 6.
Cf. the remarks of Malik ibn Anas and Ibn Taymiyyah, quoted above, with Averroes, Decisive Treatise, 20, Müller 16.
73
One can observe this in the discussion of the afterlife by Alfarabi and Averroes. In his now lost
commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Alfarabi is reported to have branded talk of afterlife
“senseless ravings and old wives’ tales.” However, he also quite easily speaks of the happiness in the
afterlife in his political works. See Muhammad Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale, trans. Lenn Evan Goodman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 100; Shlomo
Pines, “Limitations of Human Knowledge According to Al-Fārābī, Ibn Bājja, and Maimonides,” in
Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, ed. Moshe Idel and W. Z. Harvey, vol. 5 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997),
404; Alfarabi, “Selected Aphorisms,” 58, aph. 89, Fauzi Najjar 92. The reason behind this contradiction
can be found in Averroes’s discussion of the Resurrection. Averroes rejects al-Ghazali’s accusation
that the philosophers do not believe in bodily resurrection by saying that the philosophers believe
74
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
427
of al-Ghazali, Averroes distinguishes between philosophy which “only leads
a certain number of intelligent to the knowledge of happiness” whereas the
Laws (i.e., religions) “seek the instruction of the masses generally.”75 In other
words, religion is primarily concerned with the many because the few wise
men are capable of relying on their own reason to know the truth and to
guide their lives. It is therefore not surprising that this tradition of philosophy looks at the Qur’an mostly as a political phenomenon rather than as a
treasure trove of philosophical knowledge.
In going beyond Averroes to study the Muslim philosopher’s view of
the Qur’an, one must distinguish between the classical school of Islamic
philosophy and the postclassical tradition; the latter is based on a form of
speculative mystical theology. One can find the origin of this school in the
works of al-Ghazali, especially in his critique of the falasifa’s view that the
Qur’an mainly addresses the many. Al-Ghazali argued that the Qur’an and
revelation contain knowledge which goes beyond what is available to human
reason and is therefore useful to the wise as well as the many.76 The tradition
which followed in al-Ghazali’s footsteps looked at the Qur’an as a source of
knowledge which unveils its secrets through esoteric reading. In the esoteric
perspective, the Qur’anic text has two levels, zahir (outer, outward, obvious,
exōteros) and batin (inner, inward, hidden, esōteros). An interpretation which
takes its bearing from the hidden teaching of the text is called esoteric. This
type of Qur’anic commentary, which can be seen in the writings of many philosopher-mystics such as Shahab ad-Din Suhrawardi, al-Ghazali, Ibn Arabi,
and Mulla Sadra, builds a distinctive style of philosophy, or rather theosophy,
by extracting the inward meaning of the Qur’an and Hadith through esoteric
commentaries and spiritual hermeneutics. In this tradition, philosophical
activity is inseparable from ascetic practices and penetration into the inner
meaning of the Sacred Texts and sayings of the Prophet and imams, the
texts which are considered fathomless and pregnant with the highest kind
in the Resurrection more than anybody else; the reason for this being that the belief in Resurrection
“is conducive to an order amongst men on which man’s being, as man, depends.” In other words,
Averroes gives a purely utilitarian reason for the philosophers’ belief in Resurrection. According to
him, this belief provides an important framework for a virtuous life without which philosophic life
is impossible. More explicitly, one can call it a salutary myth (Averroes, Tahafut Al-Tahafut, 359–63,
Bouygues 580–88).
75
Averroes, Tahafut Al-Tahafut, 360, Bouygues 582.
Al-Ghazali, Deliverance from Error: Five Key Texts including His Spiritual Autobiography, AlMunqidh Min Al-Dalal, trans. R. J. McCarthy (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2000), 83–87; Frank Griffel,
“Muslim Philosophers’ Rationalist Explanation of Muḥammad’s Prophecy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 175–77.
76
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Volume 43 / Issue 3
of knowledge. The objective of this school, to borrow from Mulla Sadra, is
to integrate quran, irfan, and burhan, that is, the Qur’an, gnostic knowledge,
and philosophic demonstration.77
Like the classical tradition, the esoteric reading of the Qur’an does not
lack Qur’anic basis. As for the word “esoteric” (batini) itself, in the Qur’an
God is called “the First and the Last; the Outer [zahir] and the Inner [batin]”
(Q 57:3). In a famous verse (Q 3:7) often quoted by esoteric commentators of
the Qur’an, it is said that some of the Qur’anic verses “are definite in meaning…and others are ambiguous.”78 The esoteric commentators are inspired
by this passage and try to penetrate into the hidden meaning of the ambiguous verses that presumably contain mystical knowledge. Furthermore, the
esoteric commentators have interpreted a passage that speaks about the
wise who can grasp the meaning of God’s comparisons as a justification
for their own esoteric interpretation (Q 29:43). In this quest for hidden or
esoteric meanings in the Qur’an, those parts of the Qur’an that have strong
mystical aspects are used to justify its esoteric interpretation. For instance,
the famous “Light verses” (Q 24:35) are often interpreted through esoteric
commentaries.79 Furthermore, scholars have often observed that the Qur’an
is a metatextual, self-referential text; it speaks much about itself. The most
significant aspect of the self-referential character of the Qur’an is its role in
exegesis. Christians have traditionally interpreted the Old Testament allegorically, and in the New Testament, Jesus often makes use of parables which
must be interpreted by readers. But the Qur’an itself invites allegorical interpretation. For instance, in the Qur’an the workings of nature are compared
with human life and then it is said that such comparisons and allegories are
“the way We explain the revelations for those who reflect” (Q 10:24, 14:25,
16:11–13, 16:65, 16:67, 20:54, 22:73, 23:21, 24:39–40, 25:50, 25:62, 26:8, 27:86,
36:33, 39:21, 45:13, 55:1ff., 59:21).
Mustafa Muhaqqiq Damad, “The Quran and Schools of Islamic Theology and Philosophy,” in The
Study Quran, ed. Nasr et al., 1735.
77
This verse is also quoted by Averroes. However, he uses it to reconcile the discoveries of philosophy
with scripture, not for discovering truths unavailable to human reason. It is worth mentioning that
the meaning of the passage depends on how or whether one breaks the verse. See Averroes, Decisive
Treatise, 10, Müller 8, 53n20.
78
For more examples see Kristin Sands, Sufi Commentaries on the Qur’an in Classical Islam (London:
Taylor & Francis, 2006); Muhaqqiq Damad, “The Quran and Schools of Islamic Theology and Philosophy”; Toby Mayer, “Traditions of Esoteric and Sapiential Qur’anic Commentary,” in The Study Quran,
ed. Nasr et al., 1659–79.
79
The Qur’an, Reason, and Revelation
429
Whatever one might think about the legitimacy of such a theosophical
approach to the Qur’an, we are here clearly faced with a different approach
to the reason-revelation distinction in which a form of continuity replaces
the sharp contrast between the two. This is how the whole reason-revelation
distinction all but disappears in the postclassical tradition. In other words,
this postclassical tradition is, properly speaking, a synthesis of philosophy
and religion which easily leaps from one to another and thereby endangers
the integrity of the philosophic activity as a rational enterprise.
Conclusion
As I have shown, owing to the ambiguity of the Qur’anic text there have been
different views on the reason-revelation distinction in the Muslim scripture.
Although the synthesis of philosophy and religion in the postclassical tradition of Islamic philosophy can be helpful in clarifying some aspects of the
Qur’anic scripture, from the point of view of the reason-revelation distinction
the most intriguing view belongs to the classical tradition of Islamic philosophy. The followers of this tradition tended to read the Qur’an as a rational
work and considered Islam to be a rational religion compatible with philosophical activity, whose commands can be understood by natural reason.
One might not be able to call this view orthodox or compatible with belief
in revelation or the suprarational. However, one must also distinguish this
view of the Qur’an from the simple denial of revelation, found for instance
in Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi. The classical tradition maintains the
scepticism of philosophy towards the suprarational claims of revelation, but
at the same time it takes scripture seriously and tries to provide a rational
foundation for it. This view is also helped by the fact that Islam has always
seemed like a rather worldly religion to its defenders and detractors alike.
Islam sounds particularly free of any “mysteries” and its founder is more
like an earthly ruler than a classic prophet parting the seas or asking us to
believe the unbelievable, such as that a God changed into a man and walked
on water. I showed that an attentive reading of the Qur’an can lead us to
believe that Muslim philosophers’ conception of the Qur’an (a work of reason whose content is in principle accessible to human reason) is not entirely
unfaithful to the spirit of the Qur’an. Therefore, I believe this view should not
be considered solely the Muslim philosophers’ exoteric teaching but rather
an essential part of their unique philosophical vision.
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Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
4 31
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the
Discourses: A Recently Discovered Lecture
R asou l Na m a zi
University of Chicago
[email protected]
Among the Leo Strauss Papers is a notebook containing the draft of an essay
on Machiavelli that was later published as the Machiavelli chapter in History
of Political Philosophy.1 At the top of the first page in Strauss’s handwriting is
written: “A year ago I could have elaborated or improvised a lecture for your
profit or enjoyment. But: 1972.—I can only read to you a lecture (chapter
on Mach. in History).” It seems that the occasion of the marginalia was the
lecture given at St. John’s Annapolis, Maryland, in September 1972, where
Strauss had taught as a scholar in residence since 1969. The four tapes of this
lecture, which bear the title “Strauss, Leo—Machiavelli: The Prince and Discourses,” were recently discovered and remastered by the Leo Strauss Center
at the University of Chicago.
The essay underlying the lecture is Strauss’s second monograph on
Machiavelli after his 1958 Thoughts on Machiavelli.2 It cannot be described
as a summary of his complex book, but rather an original contribution. The
Leo Strauss, “Niccolò Machiavelli,” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. Joseph Cropsey and Leo
Strauss, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 271–92. This chapter replaced the Machiavelli chapter in the first edition from 1963, originally written by Warren Winiarski. The same essay was
also intended for the thirteenth chapter of Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. Strauss did not live to
see the publication of that collection and Studies was edited and published ten years after Strauss’s death
with an introduction by Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
1
The first monograph was published two years before this lecture: Leo Strauss, “Machiavelli and
Classical Literature,” Review of National Literatures 1, no. 1 (Spring 1970): 7–25.
2
© 2017 Interpretation, Inc.
432
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Volume 43 / Issue 3
essay begins with a discussion on virtue but rapidly the relationship between
Machiavelli and religion comes to the fore, thereby confirming Strauss’s
claim that the theologico-political problem is the theme of his studies.3 The
beginning of the lecture corresponds roughly to the beginning of the chapter on Machiavelli in History of Political Philosophy. In this common part,
the influence of Machiavelli on Spinoza and Hobbes as well as the moral
philosophy of Machiavelli are discussed. Owing to health problems, Strauss
stops reading his notes at the end of the section on The Prince; the rest of the
time is devoted to a question-and-answer session on Machiavelli along with
a short commentary on a passage from the Discourses on Livy. The questionand-answer section addresses several issues that are important for clarifying
different aspects Strauss’s interpretation of Machiavelli, including the place
of Mandragola in Machiavelli’s thought, Machiavelli’s view of philosophy,
Strauss’s own discovery of Machiavelli, the reception of Machiavelli in
Europe, and the efforts of Machiavelli’s successors in making his philosophy
acceptable. Strauss tries once to return briefly to the subject of his lecture
by commenting on a cosmological passage from the Discourses. In his comments, he underscores Machiavelli’s affinity with Renaissance Averroists and
their belief in the eternity of the world.
Editor’s Note: The handwritten notes of the lecture are found in the
Leo Strauss Papers at Special Collections Research Center, University of
Chicago Library, Box 14, Folder 8. In my transcript of the tapes book titles
are standardized, a few grammatical errors are corrected, and footnotes are
used to provide relevant information and to identify Strauss’s references. All
errors are the responsibility of the editor. Copyright to the texts belongs to
the estate of Leo Strauss. I thank Nathan Tarcov, Strauss’s literary executor,
for giving me permission to publish the transcript and Timothy W. Burns,
who accepted it for pulication in Interpretation. Gayle McKeen, the associate
director of the Leo Strauss Center, greatly helped me in this project, Svetozar
Minkov deciphered Strauss’s marginalia, and Theodore Blanton identified
the month of the lecture.
3
Leo Strauss, “Preface to Hobbes’ Politische Wissenschaft,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political
Philosophy 8, no. 1 (January 1979): 1–3. For a remarkable reading of the chapter from the point of
view of the theologico-political problem see Heinrich Meier, Political Philosophy and the Challenge of
Revealed Religion, trans. Robert Berman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 108–13.
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
433
Leo Strauss’s Lecture on Machiavelli’s The Prince and
the Discourses, St. John’s College, September 1972
Strauss: [in progress] campus, at the suggestion of the dean. And this was
transformed into readable form for the second edition of the History of Political Philosophy, edited by Mr. Joseph Cropsey and myself. And this will come
out in the course of this year. I think it is already in print. And what I can do
is only to read to you what I said on that occasion or wrote on that occasion,
and I am sorry if I can’t do better than that. The only improvement possible is
that we could have some discussion afterward. I hope that satisfies you. Now,
after this introductory remark, I just begin to read. I hope you don’t mind. So
if you have difficulties in understanding just raise your hand, right or the left,
whichever you prefer, and Mr. [Theodore] Blanton will be so good as to act
as the interpreter and translate your objections or difficulties into articulate
language. Is it all right? Now, I begin.
We talk all the time about virtue, although we may not use the word “virtue,” but for example “the quality of life,” or “the great society,” or “ethical,” or
“square.” But do we know what virtue is? Socrates drew from this a conclusion
that it is the greatest good for a human being to make everyday speeches about
virtue, apparently without ever finding a completely satisfactory answer.4 If
we seek however the most elaborate and least ambiguous answer to this truly
vital question we would turn to Aristotle’s Ethics, where we would read among
other things that there is a virtue of the first order called magnanimity, the
habit of choosing high honors for oneself while being worthy of them.5 We
also read there that sense of shame is not a virtue. Shame is becoming for the
young who owing to their immaturity cannot help making mistakes, but not
for mature men who are well bred, who as such simply do not make mistakes
and therefore have no use for sense of shame.6 Wonderful as these things are
we have received a very different message from a very different quarter. When
the prophet Isaiah received his vocation he was overpowered by the sense of
his unworthiness: “I am a man of unclean lips amidst a people of unclean
lips.”7 This amounts to an implicit condemnation of magnanimity and an
implicit vindication of the sense of shame. The reason given in the context is
4
Plato, Apology of Socrates 38a.
5
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1123b2–4.
6
Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1108a32, 1128b16–23.
7
Isa. 6:5.
434
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Volume 43 / Issue 3
this: “Holy, holy, [holy] is the lord of hosts.”8 There is no holy god for Aristotle
and the Greeks generally. Who is right? The Greeks, or the Jews? Athens, or
Jerusalem? And how to proceed in order to find out who is right? Must we
not admit that human wisdom is unable to settle this question, and that every
answer is based on an act of faith? But does this not constitute the complete
and final defeat of Athens? For a philosophy based on faith is no longer philosophy. Perhaps it was this unresolved conflict which did not permit Western
thought ever to come to rest. Perhaps it is this conflict which is at the bottom
of a kind of thought which is philosophic indeed but no longer Greek: modern
philosophy. It is when we try to understand modern philosophy that we come
across Machiavelli. We usually do not think of this when we speak of Machiavelli. And who does not speak of Machiavelli?
He is the only political thinker whose name has come into common use
for designating a kind of politics which has existed, exists, and will exist independently of his influence: politics guided exclusively by considerations of
expediency, which uses all reasons fair or foul, iron or poison for achieving its
ends—its ends being the aggrandizement of one’s country or fatherland, but
also using one’s fatherland in the service of one’s own self-aggrandizement of
the politician or statesman. But if this phenomenon is as old as political society itself, why is it called after Machiavelli, who thought or wrote only a short
while ago, about five hundred years ago? Machiavelli, we shall reply, was the
first to publicly defend it in books with his name on the title page. Machiavelli
made it publicly defensible. This means that his achievement, detestable or
admirable, cannot be understood in terms of politics itself or of the history
of politics—say, in terms of the Italian Renaissance—but in terms of political
thought, political philosophy, of the history of political philosophy.
Machiavelli must have achieved a break with all preceding political philosophy. There is weighty evidence in support of this. Yet his largest work, his
Discourses, serves the purpose of bringing about the rebirth of the ancient
Roman Republic. Far from being a radical innovator, Machiavelli is a restorer
of something old and forgotten.9
To find our bearings let us first glance at two post-Machiavellian thinkers: Hobbes and Spinoza. Hobbes regarded his political philosophy as wholly
new. More than that, he denied that there existed prior to his work a political
8
Isa. 6:3.
9
Machiavelli, Discourses, 1, Preface.
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
435
philosophy or political science worthy of the name.10 He regarded himself as
the founder of the true political philosophy, as the true founder of political
philosophy. He knew of course that a political doctrine claiming to be true
existed since Socrates, but this doctrine was according to Hobbes a dream
rather than science.11 For according to him Socrates and his successors were
anarchists since they permitted the appeal from the law of the land, the positive law, to a higher law, the natural law. And they thus fostered this order
utterly incompatible with civil society while, according to Hobbes, the higher
law, the natural law, commands so to speak one and only one thing: unqualified obedience to the sovereign power. It would not be difficult to show that
this line of reasoning is contradicted by Hobbes’s own teaching. At any rate
it does not go to the root of the matter. Hobbes’s serious objection to all earlier political philosophy comes out most clearly in this statement: “they that
have written of Justice & Policy in general, do all invade each and themselves,
with contradiction. To reduce this doctrine to the rules and infallibility of
reason, there is no way but first to put such principles down for a foundation,
as passion not mistrusting may not seek to displace; and afterwards to build
thereon the truth of cases in the law of nature (which hitherto have been built
in the air) by degrees, till the whole be inexpungable.”12 The rationalism of
the true political teaching consists in its being acceptable to passion, agreeable to passion. The passion which must be the basis of the rational political
teaching is fear of violent death. At first glance there seems to be an alternative to it: the passion of generosity, that’s to say, as Hobbes says: “a glory, or
pride, in appearing not to need to break (one’s word).” But this “is a generosity too rarely found to be presumed on, especially in the pursuer of wealth,
command or sensual pleasure; which are the greatest part of mankind.”13
Hobbes attempts to build on the most common ground, on the ground that is
admittedly low but has the advantage of being solid, whereas the traditional
teaching was built in the air. On the new basis, the status of morality must be
lowered. Morality is nothing but fear-inspired peaceableness. The moral law
as natural law is understood as derivative from the right of nature. The right
of self-preservation. The fundamental moral fact is a right, not a duty. This
new spirit became the spirit of the modern era, including our own age.
10
Hobbes, Elements of Law, Epistle Dedicatory.
11
Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 46.
12
Hobbes, Elements of Law, Ep. Ded.
13
Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 14.
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Hobbes is in a way a teacher of Spinoza. Nevertheless, Spinoza opens his
Political Treatise with an attack on the philosophers. The philosophers, he
says, treat the passions as vices. By ridiculing or deploring the passions, they
believe to praise a human nature which exists nowhere. They conceive of men
not as they are but as they would wish them to be. Hence their political teaching is wholly useless. Quite different is the case of the politici, of the political
men. They have learned from experience that there will be vices as long as
there will be human beings. Hence their political teaching is very valuable
and Spinoza is building his teaching on theirs. The greatest of these politici
is the most penetrating Florentine, Machiavelli. It is Machiavelli’s more subdued attack on traditional political philosophy which Spinoza bodily takes
over and translates into the less reserved language of Hobbes. As for the
sentence “there will be vices as long as there will be human beings,” Spinoza
has tacitly borrowed it from Tacitus. In Spinoza’s mouth, it amounts to an
unqualified rejection of the belief in the Messianic age. The coming of the
Messianic age would require divine intervention, or a miracle. But according
to Spinoza miracles are impossible.
Spinoza’s introduction to the Political Treatise is obviously modeled on
the fifteenth chapter of Machiavelli’s Prince. There Machiavelli says:
Since I know that many have written (on how princes should rule),
I fear that by writing about it I will be held to be presumptuous by
departing, especially in discussing such a subject, from the others.
But since it is my intention to write something useful for him who
understands, it has seemed to me to be more appropriate to go straight
to the effective truth of the matter rather than to the imagination
thereof. For many have imagined republics and principalities which
have never been seen nor are known truly to exist. There is so great a
distance between how one lives and how one ought to live that he who
rejects what people do in favor of what one ought to do, brings about
his ruin rather than his preservation; for a man who wishes to do in
every matter what is good, will be ruined among so many who are
not good. Hence it is necessary for a prince who wishes to maintain
himself, to learn to be able not to be good, or use goodness and abstain
from using it according to the commands of circumstances.
One arrives at imagined kingdoms or republics if one takes one’s bearings
by how men ought to live, by virtue. The classical philosophers did just that.
They thus arrived at the best regime of the Republic and the Politics. But
when speaking of imagined kingdoms Machiavelli thinks not only of the
philosophers; he also thinks of the kingdom of God, which from his point
of view is a conceit of visionaries, for as his pupil Spinoza said, justice rules
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
437
only where just men rule.14 But to stay with the philosophers, they regarded
the actualization of the best regime as possible but extremely improbable.
According to Plato, its actualization literally depends on a coincidence, a
most unlikely coincidence, the coincidence of philosophy and political power.15 The actualization of the best regime depends on chance, on Fortuna,
that is to say, on something which is essentially beyond human control.
According to Machiavelli, however, Fortuna is a woman who as such must be
hit and beaten to be kept under. Fortuna can be vanquished by the right kind
of man.16 There is a connection between this posture toward Fortuna and
the orientation by how men do live. By lowering the standards of political
excellence one guarantees the actualization of the only kind of political order
which is in principle possible.
Machiavelli is not concerned with how men do live merely in order to
describe it. His intention is rather, on the basis of knowledge of how men
do live, to teach princes how they ought to rule and even how they ought to
live. Accordingly, he rewrites as it were Aristotle’s Ethics. To some extent he
admits that the traditional teaching is true: men are obliged to live virtuously
in the Aristotelian sense. But he denies that living virtuously is living happily or leads to happiness. If liberality, for example, is used in the manner in
which you are obliged to use it, it hurts you. For if you use it virtuously and
how one ought to use it, the prince will ruin himself and will be compelled
to rule his subjects oppressively in order to get the necessary money. Miserliness, the opposite of liberality, is one of the vices which enable a prince to
rule. A prince ought to be liberal, however, with the property of others, for
this increases his reputation.17 Similar considerations apply to compassion
and its opposite, cruelty. This leads Machiavelli to the question of whether
it is better for a prince to be loved rather than to be feared or vice versa. It is
difficult to be both loved and feared. Since one must therefore choose, one
ought to choose being feared rather than being loved, for whether one is loved
depends on others, while being feared depends on oneself. But one must
avoid being hated. The prince will avoid becoming hated if he abstains from
the property and the women of his subjects—especially from their property,
for men resent less the murder of their father than the loss of their patrimony.
In war the reputation for cruelty does not do any harm. The greatest example
14
Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 19.
15
Plato, Republic 473d.
16
Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 25.
17
Ibid., chap. 16.
438
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Volume 43 / Issue 3
is Hannibal who was always implicitly obeyed by his soldiers and never had
to contend with mutinies either after victories or after defeats: “This could
not arise from anything but his inhuman cruelty which, together with his
innumerable virtues, made him always venerable and terrible in the eyes of
his soldiers, and without which cruelty his other virtues would not have sufficed. Not very considerately the writers on the one hand admire his action
and on the other condemn the main cause of the same.”18 We see here that
inhuman cruelty is one of Hannibal’s virtues. Another example of cruelty
well used, as Machiavelli puts it, is supplied by Cesare Borgia’s pacification
of the Romagna. In order to pacify that country, he put at its head Ramiro
d’Orco: “a man of cruelty and dispatch,” and gave him the fullest power.
Ramiro succeeded in no time, acquiring the greatest reputation. But then
Cesare thought that such an excessive power was no longer necessary and
might make him, Cesare, hated. He knew that the rigorous measures taken
by Ramiro had caused some hatred. Cesare wished therefore to show that
if any cruelty had been committed, it was not his doing but arose from the
harsh nature of his subordinate. Therefore he had him put one morning in
two pieces on the piazza of the chief town with a piece of wood and a bloody
knife at his side. The ferocity of this sight induced the populace to be in a state
of satisfaction and stupor.19
Machiavelli’s new “ought” demands then the judicious and vigorous use
of both virtue and vice according to the requirements of the circumstances.
The judicious alternation of virtue and vice is virtue, virtù, in Machiavelli’s
meaning of the word. He amuses himself and I believe some of his readers by using the word “virtue” in both the traditional sense and his sense.
Occasionally he makes a distinction between virtù and bontà, goodness. That
distinction was in a way prepared by Cicero who says that men are called
good on account of their modesty, temperance, and above all, justice and
keeping of faith, as distinguished from courage and wisdom.20 The Ciceronian distinction within the virtues in its turn reminds us of Plato’s Republic,
in which temperance and justice are virtues required of all, whereas courage and wisdom are required only of some.21 In Machiavelli the distinction
between goodness and other virtues tends to become an opposition between
goodness and virtue. While virtue is required of rulers and soldiers, goodness
18
Ibid., chap. 17.
19
Ibid., chap. 7.
20
Cicero, De officiis 2.11.
21
Plato, Rep. 428aff.
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
439
is required, or characteristic, of the populace engaged in peaceful occupations. Goodness comes to mean something like fear, fear-bred obedience to
the government, or even violence.
In quite a few passages of The Prince, Machiavelli speaks of morality in
the way in which decent men have spoken of it at all times. He has resolved
the contradiction in the 19th chapter of The Prince, in which he discusses the
Roman emperors who came after the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius
up to Maximinus. The high point is the discussion of the emperor Severus.
Severus belonged to those emperors who were most cruel and rapacious. Yet
in him was so great virtue that he could always reign with felicity, for he knew
well how to use the person of the fox and the lion, which natures a prince
must imitate. A new prince in a new principality cannot imitate the actions
of the good emperor Marcus Aurelius, nor is it necessary for him to follow
those of Severus. But he ought to take from Severus those actions which are
necessary for founding his state and from Marcus those which are appropriate and glorious for preserving a state already firmly established. The chief
theme of The Prince is a wholly new prince in a wholly new state, that is to say,
the founder. And the model for the founder as founder is the extremely clever
criminal Severus. This means that justice is precisely not, as Augustine had
taught, the foundation of kingdoms. The foundation of justice is injustice.
The foundation of morality is immorality. The foundation of legitimacy is
illegitimacy or, in our language, revolution. The foundation of freedom is
tyranny. At the beginning there is terror, not harmony or love. But there is
of course a great difference between terror for its own sake, for the sake of its
perpetuation, and terror which limits itself to laying the foundation for that
degree of humanity and freedom which is compatible with the human condition. But this distinction is at best hinted at in The Prince.
The comforting message of The Prince—for it contains a comforting
message—is given in the last chapter, which is an exhortation addressed to
an Italian prince, Lorenzo de’ Medici, to take Italy and to liberate her from
the barbarians, that is to say, the French, the Spaniards, and the Germans.
Machiavelli tells Lorenzo that the liberation of Italy is not very difficult. One
of the reasons he gives is that “extraordinary events without example that
have been induced by God, are seen: the sea has divided itself, the cloud has
led you on your way, the stone has poured out water, manna has rained.” The
events without example do have an example: the miracles following Israel’s
liberation from Egyptian bondage. What Machiavelli seems to suggest is that
Italy is the promised land for Lorenzo. But there is one difficulty: Moses, who
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led Israel out of the house of bondage towards the promised land, did not
reach that land. He died at its borders. Machiavelli thus darkly prophesied
that Lorenzo will not liberate Italy, one reason being that he lacks the extraordinary virtù needed for bringing that great work to its consummation. But
there is more to the extraordinary events without example of which nothing
is known other than what Machiavelli asserts about them. All these extraordinary events occurred before the revelation on Sinai. What Machiavelli
prophesies is that a new revelation, a revelation of a new Decalogue, is imminent. The bringer of that revelation is of course not that mediocrity Lorenzo,
but a new Moses. That new Moses is Machiavelli himself, and the new Decalogue is the wholly new teaching on the wholly new prince in a wholly new
state. It is true that Moses was an armed prophet and that Machiavelli belongs
to the unarmed ones who necessarily come to ruin, as is said in The Prince. In
order to find the solution for this difficulty one must turn to the other great
work of Machiavelli, the Discourses.
Now forgive me ladies and gentlemen if I make a pause for sheer bodily
reasons and let us have a discussion of what I said about The Prince before we
turn to the Discourses.
Student: You mentioned Hobbes. There is a passage I am trying to put
in simple words in which he condemns the afterlife as a matter of superstition. That rejection must precede the turning to passions as the focal point of
political power.22
Strauss: Well, I thought you would begin with a more simple question:
whether Hobbes ever mentions Machiavelli. As far as I remember, never. That
is Hobbes’s peculiar decency. That he doesn’t mention Machiavelli. I was in
former years a close student of Hobbes and it took me years and years until I
saw Machiavelli behind Hobbes.23 Now, of course there is a connection, you
are quite true: fear of violent death cannot have that terrific importance if
there is a life after death. And therefore the whole Hobbesian doctrine presupposes the denial of life after death. That is what you were driving at? Yes, it
is implied. There is a discussion of this subject in the Leviathan. I wish I could
reconstruct that. He says somewhere that there are two kinds of fear which
can make men decent. The one is the greater fear and the other is the fear of a
22
This is a summary of a comment that is partly inaudible.
See Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1963), xvi.
23
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
441
greater object, I believe.24 That is not the word he uses, but it amounts to that.
Meaning this: the fear of death is one and the fear, say, of punishment after
death. But for people what is decisive practically is the fear of death, because
punishment after death presupposes the belief already of a life after death and
that is questionable. Mr. Berns?
Laurence Berns: In the comparison of Hobbes with Machiavelli, isn’t
there a fundamental contrast between the two in connection with the status
of glory? Hobbes’s whole construction depends upon the ability to sort of
overwhelm the desire for glory by fear of the sovereign. It would seem that,
in that respect, in what he says about the importance of glory and honor,
Machiavelli is closer to the classics. I happen to be reading Hegel lately and
Hegel seems also to restore the desire for honor and desire for glory. He even
makes it fundamental, if you understand recognition in that way. So it would
seem almost as if there is a classical element in, say, Machiavelli and Hegel.
This isn’t in Hobbes.
Strauss: Yes, sure. Hobbes in this respect as in some others is the most
modern of the three, leading up very soon from this self-preservation toward
what Locke called comfortable self-preservation. And that is much more the
spirit of modern times than honor or glory.
Laurence Berns: It is in one sense, but I think it seems the kind of revolutionary impulse that seems to almost dominate academia almost everywhere,
seems to have a great deal with love of honor and glory.
Strauss: Academic life? [Laughter]
Berns: No, not academic life, the spirit of revolution, to a certain extent
as a kind of reaction, perhaps.
Strauss: But if you think, the moment of revolution is a class struggle.
And this has to do with the relations of production. Then you are straight in
Locke. I do not deny that a very low kind of striving for honor and glory and
prestige plays a very great role in academic life. But in the academic teaching,
especially in the academic teaching of sociology, there is no place for honor
and glory.
Berns: Except in so far as it foments revolution, somehow the
revolutionary…
24
Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 14.
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Strauss: Ja, but according to the orthodox teaching, as they would call
it, revolution has to do with class struggle and class struggle has to do with
relations of production and that is Locke, and Locke is only a modification
of Hobbes. But there is another point implied in what you said and that is
that the man who was the much more revolutionary thinker of these two,
Machiavelli and Hobbes, namely Machiavelli, had to be mitigated, had to be
made acceptable by men like Hobbes or by men like Locke in order to become
successful. I believe that is a general, one can almost speak of a universal law
that such teachings have to be made acceptable and digestible to be powerful.
Berns: The only thing is that it seems to me that one could also say that
this respectability in a certain sense became boring so that the other thing
had to come back in too, via Hegel. Namely, something like craving for glory,
craving for recognition at least.
Strauss: But I do not know whether Hegel is as important in this connection as somebody else who corrected Hobbes and Locke and who had I
believe a much broader influence than Hegel, namely, Rousseau. The whole
sentiment, especially the sentiment of compassion opposing comfortable
self-preservation…
Strauss: [tape resumes] of transpolitical morality, if I may say so, and
political morality. And there is no place for that in Machiavelli.
Student: But there is no real dilution of power, there is no concept of that in
Machiavelli. Either he is a successful prince or he is a punk, there is not much…
Strauss: Ja, then Machiavelli would prefer one who is not a beast, enjoying killing and torturing for its own sake. He would do that. But if you would
raise the question “why do you do that?” whether you would get a very clear
answer from Machiavelli is not so easy to say. Because then the main point
would be that he is an efficient prince.
Student: But, you would agree there is no, in terms of theoretical conception, there is no concept of dilution of power guided by…
Strauss: Not that I know. I don’t think so. At least I do not see at the
moment.
Student: It seems to me that the greatest possible human achievement
for Machiavelli is the founding you spoke of. I wonder whether that requires
a rejection of the alternatives to the greatest possible human existence, take
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
443
philosophy understood in a certain way. But it is so curious, to me at any rate,
he is silent, utterly silent…
Strauss: I am sure it does. But not quite, he is not utterly silent; silent,
yes he is, but there is a passage I believe just in the center of the Florentine
Histories where he tells a story of Cato, the famous Cato, who expelled the
philosophers from Rome, and Machiavelli praises Cato for that.25 Rome
would not have remained so healthy and strong for such a long time if Cato
had not driven out the philosophers. Philosophy and a healthy republican
life are incompatible. That is nothing new but it is in Machiavelli too. But it is
better known today through Rousseau but it is also in Machiavelli. Yes, and
surely the philosophic life is not—the great question whether the philosophic
or the political life is preferable is not explicitly, thematically discussed by
Machiavelli. To that extent, I agree with you.
Student: Then the suggestion is that the philosophical life remains as a
kind of ultimate rival possibility…
Strauss: Of course, all these things have their depth and their surfaces.
Now what does the contemplative life mean in Machiavelli’s time in popular use? The life of monks. And he was against them. And he preferred the
Scipios and Hannibals and such individuals to the monks. Therefore, he had
no place for the contemplative life. But of course, it doesn’t mean that he was
not himself in his way a contemplative man. There is a painting of Machiavelli of his later years, I think it is in Florence somewhere, where he looks like
a monk.26 Not that he was a particularly ascetic man, which he was not. But a
certain intransigence, contemplative intransigence which he had.
Student: I think the difficulty however is the question of the object of
contemplation. Thinking about the human things which seems to have been
his greatest contemplation, I think one wouldn’t deny this being thought as a
philosophic life…
Strauss: That’s a good point. In other words, that he gave thought to the
human passions, to the human soul, you would probably admit. Although he
never uses the word “soul,” in The Prince and the Discourses, never. Also for
an obvious reason, because of the religious connotations. There are two Italian words, going back to two kindred Latin words: animo from animus and
25
Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, 5.1.
This is probably the portrait of Machiavelli by Cristofano Dell’Altissimo di Papi kept at Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
26
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anima from anima. Anima means soul; he never uses that in the two great
works. But animo he uses all the time. I would translate animo by something
like “temper.” That exists. But anima, the less said about it the better. But
that is not all; he has also to think about the government of the whole, of the
whole universe. He speaks about it, with extreme rarity. But he does. I may
say something about that later.
Student: We could say that the first sentence of The Prince indicates that:
“all states and all principalities.”
Strauss: In other words, not only human but also the universe.
Student: There is also the fact that when I first learned about it came as
a surprise: that they found that he prepared evidently rather carefully a text
of Lucretius.
Strauss: Yes. There is no doubt that he was familiar with this kind of
thing. This manuscript still exists, did you know that? In Florence. And some
individual will probably edit Machiavelli’s emendations.27 On our way here,
Mr. Blanton, you had a question which I thought was very sensible. But I
refused to answer it because I thought maybe it will come out from this discussion. Do you remember what your difficulty regarding The Prince was?
Blanton: It had to do with the very soul of the prince, the very man the
prince. It seemed that he must mouth things of mercy and religion and yet he
must be able in a minute to turn around and do the very basest things. And
I am wondering, that raises the question for me of the implications of The
Prince itself. It seems to me that the man on the top would be a man without
friends, let’s say, at least a man without much happiness, unless he can take
some sort of…
Strauss: But he derives an enormous happiness from his success, from
his power, from his ruling. You presuppose, according to Machiavelli erroneously, that happiness consists in virtue, in moral virtue. That he denies.
He would say that the prince would become very miserable if he were to act
always virtuously.
Blanton: But I am thinking he brings up several times in The Prince
Hiero of Syracuse. And it makes me think of the dialogue of Xenophon…
27
See Chauncey E. Finch, “Machiavelli’s Copy of Lucretius,” Classical Journal 56, no. 1 (1960): 29–32.
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
445
Strauss: That has nothing to do with that. This Hiero has nothing to do
with Xenophon’s Hiero. They are entirely different men. That was a kind of
copybook example of a virtuous prince of later antiquity.
Blanton: But it would seem to me that the prince would be a man who
couldn’t sleep at night, who is constantly fearful of every man around him.
Strauss: Do you believe that Stalin did not enjoy excellent sleep? I admit
I was never in his bedroom but I believe he slept very well. Especially after
he had committed a considerable amount of murders of people who could be
dangerous to him. I think that is a prejudice that criminals, especially largescale criminals, have sleepless nights on account of their crimes. At least that
is surely Machiavelli’s opinion. It would be wonderful if that were so. Surely
you can say Stalin was punished soon after his death where in the 20th or 21st
Congress where Khrushchev made his famous condemnation of Stalin. But
he did not hear anymore.
Student: There is a powerful sentence in Capote’s book In Cold Blood.
It depicts Perry Smith in that book who says that I liked Mr. Clutter, he was
a nice guy. I thought so up until the time I slashed his throat… He did not
regret the crime. There was no regret, yet he expressed this…
Strauss: I believe that the question which you put to me on our way here
was somewhat different. But I am sorry I cannot reconstruct it. I think the
point is this: Machiavelli’s virtue, in his sense of virtue, however beastly it
is, must have a reward, on the basis of Machiavelli’s principles. Otherwise
it wouldn’t be effective. But the reward is glory, honor, and especially on a
large scale. If he is not… Well, how did Stalin say about Hitler, this beautiful sentence: Hitler was a very able man, but basically not intelligent. This
implies that Stalin thought about himself that he was both, very able and
basically intelligent man. He founded really a new empire. He died in ’53 and
it still lasts. Hitler’s didn’t last twelve years, although he promised a thousand years. Now if you think of those people who established empires which
lasted centuries and were looked up to and revered by many generations as
great men—think of Julius Caesar, among other people—that is worthy. That
weighs more heavy in the scales than being stabbed by Khrushchevs. He
would say, of course Caesar committed a lot of crimes but all these crimes
led to the fact that Rome lasted for a couple of centuries more, otherwise she
would have gone to pieces because of the conflict between the patricians and
the plebeians. You can then turn it around and say Machiavelli’s immoral
teaching implies a moral teaching of sorts: to establish and to found and
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preserve a civil society by means utterly incompatible with ordinary decency
but forming the basis of ordinary decency; where would people be able to
act with ordinary decency if there were not a civil society? A civil society
which their ordinary decency can never bring about. And therefore one can
make a moral case, so to speak, for Machiavelli’s immoralism, and I think
that was never completely alien to his thought, but on the other hand he did
not conceal that implication.
Student: But look what he has to do. If the prince comes by it by his own
fortune or his own ability, the prince, in order to found his state, has to do
away with the very best men. Those men who have intelligence or ambition
to be anything like him must be annihilated and it leaves only the men he is
left to deal with, just ordinary men.
Strauss: But there are various degrees of ordinary men. Think of Caesar
and his friends who for reasons of decency opposed him, the conspirators,
especially Brutus and Cassius. If I understand Shakespeare’s play correctly,
what it means is this: Caesar could never have been disposed of except by
the alliance between Brutus and Cassius. Brutus whose honesty vouched for
the honesty of the enterprise and Cassius who had the political sense, the
Machiavellianism. To make this [understandable], how did they call it, in
the last election? In connection with [George] McGovern? How did they call
that? I do not know. It was a word used in connection with McGovern the
last election. Integrity or something of this kind. Politically manageable. But
this applies already to an earlier stage. If this was the basis of alliance between
Brutus and Cassius, Brutus supplying the morality and Cassius supplying the
Machiavellianism. Then they murder Caesar. The whole thing doesn’t work
because now the difference between Brutus and Cassius destroys the alliance.
So, that is the proof that Caesar was necessary. You can have this only in one
man, not in an alliance of two. This is what happened then. Brutus ruins
somehow the Machiavellianism of Cassius. And Cassius on the other hand
endangers the integrity of Brutus. That is an indirect proof of the necessity
for Caesar, for in Hegelian language a synthesis of Brutus and Cassius which
is superior to the ingredients of Brutus on the one hand and Cassius on the
other. And I believe something of this kind was in Shakespeare’s mind and of
course also in Machiavelli’s mind.
Student: I believe in The Prince there is a passage regarding the will of fortune, that despite the professed attempts of the prince his rule will decline…
Strauss: Because of the power of Fortuna. Chapter 25.
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
447
Student: Fortune. Is that to be taken seriously?
Strauss: Yes, but it is qualified there. Fortuna is very powerful but if a
man is very strong and very virile then he can keep Fortuna under and therefore Fortuna is ultimately no danger for the right kind of man.
Student: My other question is about the possibility of making a case for
the morality of the prince in the circumstances of the founding. What came
to my mind was your distinction in Natural Right between means necessary
in extraordinary situations versus means necessary in ordinary situations.
Machiavelli does not seem to make any such distinction.
Strauss: But he implies it. I do not remember at the moment a clear
example, but sure.
Student: Would you say that he also makes the case persuasively that the
actions of the prince are in the name of the good of the whole?
Strauss: That goes without saying. He mentions this I think in the first chapter where he speaks about virtue and vice in general, that is chapter 15, where
he says he must use virtue and vice both, alternately, as circumstances require.
Student: That part I understand, but I am not convinced that…
Strauss: But in this connection he says he must of course always speak of
the virtues, and say he does it in the name of piety, of liberality, and the other
things when he acts impiously and illiberally and so on. This is, I would say,
rather elementary as for Machiavelli. But it was in the literature, it was not
quite elementary and after Machiavelli’s time there was a school of thought
called “Tacitismo,” from Tacitus, where Tacitus’s description of the Roman
emperors, especially the more decent ones, was used as a kind of mirrors of
princes, a Machiavellian kind of princely government, and this played a great
role in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. It ended only around 1700 I
would say. That was an enormous literature.
Student: I can’t remember the chapter in The Prince, but he says he
intends to speak about law, or alludes to the fact that he might speak about
law, but he goes on to stress how the prince must always be concerned with
war, even in so-called peace time he must be a fighter, and all he is thinking
about the nobles, the landscape, he never, in The Prince at least, comes back
to law, never says much about it.
Strauss: The whole plan of The Prince excludes law as law, it is chapters…
my memory is no longer what it was…it’s a sequence of chapters dealing with
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war, these are chapters 12, 13, and 14, I believe. I do not know, but I believe it
is. So you would of course expect the war, but he speaks instead of war of the
prince and his enemies, and then the other part which deals with the prince
and his friends, has to do with his subjects, his obedient subjects, that is law,
they will obey the law. So the law as law did not have such an importance
because the law presupposes the power to lay down the law and to enforce
the law, and that is Machiavelli’s theme, not the law as law. That is just the
opposite of Hobbes; he wrote a book called De Cive, Of Citizen. He didn’t
write a book “Of Prince.” And the main lesson given to the subject, to the
citizen by Hobbes, is: obey your prince. The commands which the prince
gives and ought to give, that was not Hobbes’s theme. You have to figure that
out for yourself. That’s his advice here. To a considerable extent they surely
would not be identical with Aristotle’s advices but they would be somewhat
less harsh than those of Machiavelli, there is no doubt.
Now since the question of Machiavelli’s cosmology was implied in the
discussion a short while before, I believe I will discuss briefly the chapter of
the Discourses in which this subject is discussed. You have the Discourses
with you. Book 2, chapter 5 and read that.
Blanton: From the beginning?
Strauss: Ja. But read slowly.
Blanton:
To those philosophers who maintain that the world has existed from
eternity, we might reply, that, if it were really of such antiquity, there
would reasonably be some record beyond five thousand years, were
it not that we see how the records of time are destroyed by various
causes, some being the acts of men and some of Heaven. Those that
are the acts of men are the changes of religion and of language; for
when a new sect springs up, that is to say a new religion, the first effort
is (by way of asserting itself and gaining influence) to destroy the old
or existing one; and when it happens that the founders of the new
religion speak a different language, then the destruction of the old religion is easily effected. This we know from observing the proceedings
of the Christians against the heathen religion; for they destroyed all its
institutions and all its ceremonies, and effaced all record of the ancient
theology. It is true that they did not succeed in destroying entirely the
record of the glorious deeds of the illustrious men of the ancient creed,
for they were forced to keep up the Latin language by the necessity of
writing their new laws in that tongue; but if they could have written
them in a new language (bearing in mind their other persecutions),
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
there would have been no record whatever left of preceding events.
Whoever reads the proceedings of St. Gregory, and of the other heads
of the Christian religion, will see with what obstinacy they persecuted
all ancient memorials, burning the works of the historians and of the
poets, destroying the statues and images and despoiling everything
else that gave but an indication of antiquity. So that, if they had added
a new language to this persecution, everything relating to previous
events would in a very short time have been sunk in oblivion.
It is reasonable to suppose that what the Christians practiced towards
the Pagans, these practiced in like manner upon their predecessors.
And as the religions changed two or three times in six thousand years,
all memory of the things done before that time was lost; and if nevertheless some vestiges of it remain, they are regarded as fabulous, and
are believed by no one; as is the case with the history of Diodorus Siculus, who gives an account of some forty or fifty thousand years, yet is
generally looked upon as being mendacious, and I believe with justice.
As to causes produced by Heaven, they are such as destroy the human
race, and reduce the inhabitants of some parts of the world to a very
few in number; such as pestilence, famine, or inundations. Of this the
latter are the most important, partly because they are most universal,
and partly because the few that escape are chiefly ignorant mountaineers, who, having no knowledge of antiquity themselves, cannot
transmit any to posterity. And should there be amongst those who
escape any that have such knowledge, they conceal or pervert it in
their own fashion, for the purpose of gaining influence and reputation; so that there remains to their successors only just so much as
they were disposed to write, and no more. And that such inundations,
pestilences, and famines occur cannot be doubted, both because all
history is full of accounts of them, and because we see the effects of
them in the oblivion of things, and also because it seems reasonable
that they should occur. For in nature as in simple bodies, when there is
an accumulation of superfluous matter, a spontaneous purgation takes
place, which preserves the health of that body. And so it is with that
compound body, the human race; when countries become overpopulated and there is no longer any room for all the inhabitants to live, nor
any other places for them to go to, these being likewise all fully occupied—and when human cunning and wickedness have gone as far
as they can go—then of necessity the world must relieve itself of this
excess of population by one of those three causes; so that mankind,
having been chastised and reduced in numbers, may become better
and live with more convenience. Tuscany then, as I have said above,
was once powerful, religious, and virtuous; it had its own customs and
language; but all this was destroyed by the Roman power, so that there
remained nothing of it but the memory of its name.
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Strauss: In the first place at the very beginning of this chapter you would
have seen that he refers to philosophers. So he knew something of philosophers
and the particular point he has in mind here is that there are philosophers
who teach that the world, this world inhabited by human beings, lasts forever.
What is the very beginning?
Blanton: “To those philosophers who maintain that the world has existed
from eternity, we might reply, that, if it were really of such antiquity, there
would reasonably be some record beyond five thousand years.”
Strauss: Who are these philosophers who say that?
Blanton: I think immediately of Aristotle.
Strauss: Sure, the Aristotelians, vulgarly called Averroists, i.e., the unbelieving Aristotelians. They said the visible universe is eternal and man has
always generated man, there never was a first man. What does Machiavelli
say? He replies to them.
Blanton: He says that there are various causes for the records of human
beings being lost and that any man who speaks in terms of eternity is justly
laughed at or justly put down, I guess.
Strauss: But still, when you read it without any distrust of Machiavelli,
you would say he tries to refute this antibiblical argument, but in fact he supports it. He says: this were true if there were no ruin of documents, therefore
the antibiblical Aristotelian argument is not refuted. That means in the context: that’s a solid argument.
Blanton: But he refers to the one historian who gives an account of forty
or fifty thousand years…
Strauss: All right, Diodorus Siculus. But is he not trustworthy because he
speaks of forty or fifty thousand years, or because he adopts all kinds of old
women’s tales he picked up in Egypt, where he came from?
Blanton: The latter, I suppose.
Strauss: Yes, so that is not very helpful. But there is another point which
we have to consider here. These causes of ruin of what they now call civilizations by war and such things, he calls human causes. And what are the divine
causes? But what is true of the ruin is of course also true of the originations of
sects—that was a favorite term of the Averroists for religion. Sects have their
origin not in divine acts but in human acts.
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
4 51
Student: Not revelation.
Strauss: Not revelation proper. Ja. That is one of the most revealing chapters in the whole book, the whole Discourses. Now this I may link up with…
The Discourses is about four or five times as long as The Prince and is much
richer in matter than The Prince, much more difficult to understand also. I
can only give you one little help towards this understanding: The fifth chapter
of the second book, which we just read, is the sixty-fifth chapter of the whole
work, the first book consisting of sixty chapters. Sixty-five is as you may easily
figure out a multiple of thirteen: 5 × 13. That is one principle of Machiavelli’s
writing, the number thirteen. The Prince, a book much easier to understand,
consists of twenty-six chapters and twenty-six is more obviously a multiple
of thirteen than sixty-five is. That is a long a question: Why did he pick this
strange number? That is a question into which I cannot go because it would
have to do all kinds of strange things which would remind more of doings of
alchemists that of students of Machiavelli. So we’d better forgo that.
At any rate, book 2, chapter 5 of the Discourses is the most obviously
cosmological chapter of the Discourses with the possible exception of the
proemium of book 3, where he doesn’t give any details but where he speaks of
the unchangeability of the natural order. Now let us have another discussion,
for the same reason for which I had to propose a discussion a short while ago.
Student: Of course, to agree with Averroes on a certain point does not
necessarily mean to be an Averroist. He might agree with regard to the possible eternity of the universe but he might not agree with theological first
cause, for example.
Strauss: Ja, that is true. But the question is how deeply had Machiavelli
studied these kinds of things. That’s a question to which I believe no one has
the answer. The second point which was already mentioned is that we know
a bit of Machiavelli’s philosophical studies: his study of Lucretius. The copy
of Lucretius which he copied and in which he inserted some emendations
of his own is still in existence. But more specifically the Averroistic teaching, however much it might differ from Aristotle’s own teaching, was surely
a teleological teaching. And there is no place for teleology in Machiavelli,
there is no place for teleology in Lucretius. And therefore I believe the most
cautious suggestion one could make is this: the natural philosophy on which
Machiavelli builds is a decayed Aristotelianism somehow under the influence
of Epicurus. I couldn’t with a good conscience go beyond this very unsatisfactory formulation.
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Student: What about the possibility of identifying nature with fortuna.
Could nature be called fortuna? Would that be another name for nature?
Strauss: No, it is not possible. Because the orderliness which belongs to
nature does not belong to fortuna. For example, you have two ears, that is our
nature. But that there are from time to time people who have only one ear,
that’s fortuna.
Student: He speaks of purgation in this fifth chapter [of book 2].
Strauss: That is correct. That is a kind of teleology.
Student: That is also a kind of fortuna.
Strauss: No, on the contrary. That is order. There is a certain overpopulation, taking place from time to time. And then coming with that
overpopulation, immorality—say, cannibalism. And then something must
be done by nature, [i.e.,] teleology. And therefore wars are an important part
of natural economy: to get rid of the danger of overpopulation. That is an
argument we find in medieval Averroists, for example Marsilius of Padua,
that wars are very important for that purpose, to prevent overpopulation.
That is true, there a kind of teleology implied in that.
Student: The difficulty is of course that a war, a plague, a flood seem to
be interpretable as for the sake of ridding us of excess population. But they
don’t seem to be natural in the sense of being always or for the most part.
They seem to be chance.
Strauss: Ja, this is true. I see now, there is a variety of considerations coming there together. Because what Machiavelli is doing in chapter 5 of book 2
is to present his very heretical view in as respectable a guise as possible. And
therefore he brings in the flood; flood which is after all not only a teaching of
pagan philosophers but of the Bible itself. Machiavelli uses that for his own
purposes, that such floods lead to destruction of all monuments of the earlier
times and no wonder that there is no argument available proving that the
world is older than five thousand and so hundred years. [inaudible]
Student: That seems to suggest that Noah was an ignorant mountaineer.
Strauss: Ja, that is also true. That is not good for Noah. That is true, but it
corresponds to what Plato says on the same subject in the Laws: people who
don’t read and write and therefore can’t leave documents by which you can
prove anything.…
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
453
Strauss: [in progress] Just as here a wholly nonpolitical man establishes
an illicit relation with a woman, in an immoral manner, but in a way which
some people would find charming, the same is done by a prince who establishes his power by illicit means and yet one cannot simply condemn him,
according to Machiavelli. You may have read the article by Harvey Mansfield; he has written an article on the Mandragola from this point of view.28
There was an international meeting somewhere in Italy on Machiavelli and
he wrote about that. There is a parallel between Mandragola and the political
writings but a parallel is something different: these are not political people.
Machiavelli has a formula for that; when he speaks of Lorenzo de’ Medici
he says he had a quasi-impossible combination of gravity and levity.29 Gravity—politics; levity—love. Two entirely different provinces, akin because they
are both human, and yet radically different. That is one reason why I would
hesitate calling Machiavelli a hedonist.
Student: Another question about the character of the prince: I remember
in a reading of the Republic being struck by the guardians being compared to
dogs, that is, friendly to the citizens and angry at any foreigner, and I remember at the time thinking that’s hard to understand, how a man could train
himself to be both vicious and compassionate. But it seems to me even harder
to understand in Machiavelli because at least in the Republic or in a city in
the way that the ancients talk about it there is a fatherland, there is a strict
definition somehow of who a proper citizen is. But in the terms of Machiavelli
it seems that the citizens that the prince would be friendly to are not necessarily those within his city but some people appear, maybe in the city maybe
out of the city.
Strauss: Not quite. I haven’t made statistics of the use of patria in Machiavelli but that goes without saying that the political society is a fatherland.30
There may be some marginal cases where these two things do not coincide
but as a rule they coincide. I don’t believe that you will find a crucial difference there.
Student: It seemed that the prince is potentially vicious towards everyone, there is no one that stands outside of the possibility of being sliced up.
Harvey C. Mansfield, “The Cuckold in Machiavelli’s Mandragola,” in The Comedy and Tragedy of
Machiavelli: Essays on the Literary Works, ed. Vickie B. Sullivan (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2000), 1–30.
28
29
Florentine Histories, 8.36.
But see Leo Strauss, “Machiavelli’s Intention: The Prince,” American Political Science Review 51, no.
1 (1957): 36.
30
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Strauss: Yes, if he doesn’t behave. But if he behaves why should he slice
him up? Is it not better, as Socrates even put it, to use him alive than to kill
him and only have the trouble of having him buried?31
Student: The only thing is that it sounds like the analogy is between the
dog and the prince, but actually it is between the prince and the master of the
dog who directs the dog on as to who the enemies and who the friends are.
Strauss: But why does Plato introduce the example of the dogs there in
the second book? What is the purpose, the comparison of the guardian with
a dog?
Student: I am not sure.
Strauss: A very obvious phenomenon: the simple man identifies the fellow citizen with a friend and the foreigner is a damned foreigner. That is
universal and therefore the people who are the defenders par excellence, the
guardians, they must have this to a higher degree. From ordinary experience,
we all know how easy the combination is and Socrates puts in a way that it
seems to be very paradoxical so that he can solve it only by going outside of
the human sphere and bring in the dogs, you know, as if there were no human
examples for that. The joke which he makes is really this: that he calls dogs
the philosophic animal because the dogs make a distinction between friends
and foes with a view to knowledge. Those they know they call friends and
those they do not know they call enemies, and since they take their bearings
by knowledge they are philosophic animals. In fact they are just the opposite
of philosophers.
Student: I don’t think I see why.
Strauss: Well, a philosopher would not say that the mere fact that a man
is an alien makes him an enemy.
Student: Is the Mandragola an example of ministerial poetry or is there
such a thing in Machiavelli?
Strauss: No, I mean you can put it this way, you can say there is a sphere
of politics which is the most magnificent and impressive sphere which exists
for most people, for Machiavelli especially. But there is something else and
this can be loosely described as the sphere of levity; because politics, that is
great, think only of war which belongs to politics, gravity. And love, levity.
31
Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.11.
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
455
[Strauss thumps on the table for emphasis.] Is this clear? So you can say,
although it is to take some liberties, but it is not wholly irrational to say that
the Mandragola and similar works of Machiavelli deal with the nonpolitical,
with the transpolitical to the extent to which Machiavelli is willing to deal
with that. Did I make myself understood?
Student: Would there then be any political role for comedy or tragedy, or
poetry in general?
Strauss: Machiavelli never spoke about that, he wrote something about
Dante and Boccaccio but not about tragedy and comedy as such. Surely he
would say that, but his business was to write the Discorsi and Mandragola
and related things.
Student: But Mandragola is the problem for me. I can’t understand how
the Mandragola being comic but also to a certain extent dealing with things
that would have great gravity. . .
Strauss: No, that cannot be called grave.
Student: Political aspects of it as Dr. Mansfield thought so.
Strauss: The point is that it is not political. You mean its kinship, in the
parallelism with politics. Is that what you mean? All right.
Student: One could also say there is a kind of presentation of what might
be called the ethical doctrine of The Prince insofar as it gives you examples of
how virtue is to be used. Callimanco could never have succeeded if he hadn’t
been taught or learned how to use the virtues of The Prince on the mother
and others.
Strauss: But princes are warned by Machiavelli to be particularly cautious regarding the womenfolk of their subjects.32 So the Machiavellian
prince precisely if he is very Machiavellian would never do this kind of thing.
He had so many opportunities apart from that, there is no good reason for it.
Student: There is no way to answer that and remain decent, there is no
way to try to argue with that and remain decent.
Strauss: Ja, probably, yes. What was the name of that woman, the ancestress of William the Conqueror? Or was it the wife of his… The woman in
Bayeux, whom the Norman nobleman saw doing her laundry in the river
32
Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 17.
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there. And then took her on his horse and rode away with her. Was she the
mother of William the Conqueror? There is such a story, a true story. But I
forgot the exact relation. Maybe the wife of William the Conqueror, I think
he got into trouble with that boy later on who came from this relation. So you
see it is not advisable, even if you are William the Conqueror, to do that.33
Student: You suggested that there is an affinity between Hobbes, Spinoza, and Machiavelli.
Strauss: That depends a bit on the point of view. There is a great affinity if you compare Machiavelli and Hobbes taken together with Plato and
Aristotle, there is no question. But if you take Hobbes on his own terms and
Machiavelli on his own terms, then you can say however anti-Platonic and
anti-Aristotelian they may be, they are so different that it is of no use to bring
them together, it is in no way enlightening to bring them together. That was a
view which I held for many years. But then eventually I reached the view that
they really belong together and Hobbes’s silence on Machiavelli doesn’t mean
anything. It was a general rule of policy not to mention the name of Machiavelli. Let me see, the first man who mentioned Machiavelli, his enemies of
course mention him all the time, but the first man who was not an enemy of
Machiavelli, was this strange man, a Belgian, a professor at Leuven, what was
his name? He changed his religion according to the political order, when the
Protestants were in ascendancy he was a Protestant, and when the Catholics
were in ascendancy he was a Catholic, he was a very famous man—oh, Justus
Lipsius! Well known in the literature as the founder of the neo-Stoic school
and he wrote textbooks of politics based partly on Machiavelli and partly…
how the Stoics come in I do not know, I had a student who wanted to write his
doctoral dissertation on how the Stoics came into this mixture but he never
finished his dissertation, he went into academic administration, which is I
believe the death of doctoral dissertations in many cases. Yes, Justus Lipsius.
He was in his way an important man, not only on account of Machiavelli, but
he was also a correspondent of Montaigne. Because when you take the Essays
of Montaigne which consists also of three books, there are certain external
similarities between the Essays and Machiavelli’s Discourses, which I never
understood, but this relation with Justus Lipsius suggested something to me.
Of course, Bacon speaks of Machiavelli with a certain respect, he calls him
one of the doctors of Italy,34 which is a beautiful epithet for Machiavelli I
33
The story is that of Herleva of Falaise, mother of William the Conqueror.
34
In The Essays, “Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature.”
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
457
believe. Bacon praised him, with a certain criticism, but he praised him. But
as a rule people blamed him, especially his enemies. But in the second half of
the seventeenth century he was established as a European celebrity; so Spinoza
speaks of him with high regard, but Spinoza was himself a rather dubious
fellow, and therefore that was not an unqualified compliment, for Machiavelli
to be praised by Spinoza. And in the eighteenth century then I think this was
over, Machiavelli was accepted. Although Frederick the Great still thought
it good to write a book called Anti-Machiavelli which he wrote immediately
before he started with his Machiavellian actions. Which is of course sign of
a deep understanding for Machiavelli. But Hobbes, not so strangely because
Hobbes was in a way a very cautious man, never mentions Machiavelli, as
far as I know, and the only proof I have is that I looked up the indices of the
English and the Latin works and the name Machiavelli doesn’t occur. I have
never gone over the whole texts of Hobbes to see whether he mentions or does
not mention Machiavelli. That could be a good term paper. [inaudible]
Student: I am bothered a little bit by this idea of trying to give some
kind of moral justification for the prince as the founder of a political order.
I wanted you develop that a little bit further. I wonder, how can one call it a
moral act if the primary consideration on the part of a founder is a completely
self-regarding thing?
Strauss: All right, take a man who is wholly unselfish, wholly altruistic as
they say. And he sees that his fellow men cannot live decently together except
in civil society under laws with teeth in them. Is this a moral thought? I mean
good, just laws are of course enforced laws. All right, then he must get the
power to make such laws.
Student: I am not concerned with the actions so much. Perhaps he has to
do terrible things in order to do it. What I am asking about more is in terms
of his own motivation.
Strauss: How does Aristotle in his wisdom say? The intentions are
immanifest.35 No human being can know what the intentions are. But you
see certain actions presented to you in a certain light and that is blameless.
Such is the way in which we humans have to judge.
Student: Let me ask you a slightly different question: would you say that
this is a beginning of the notion of the invisible hand?
35
Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1178a30.
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Strauss: Why should a particularly… There are so many beginnings
for that.
Student: Because it seems to me that the argument there is that somehow
the self-regarding passions turn out to be good for society.
Strauss: I was not thinking of self-regarding, I was thinking of a man
who is wholly other-regarding and for this reason feels that he or someone
who listens to his advice has to come to power to lay down good laws and have
them enforced. The question of self- and other-regarding does not come up
in my argument. You see, there is a thing which is called utopianism, did you
ever hear that word? There is an argument made against utopianism that this
precisely is immoral because it disregards the circumstances and the complexities; to put it in a different way, the man who considers the circumstances,
he is a moral man. I mean it depends, there can be of course people who are
very unscrupulous and derive pleasure from their unscrupulousness, men
like Bismarck, who still are clever enough if need be to present their immoral
actions as prompted by moral motives. I am not speaking of this kind of man,
I am speaking of honest men. But I think we have sometimes examples in
this country of this dualism: of moral politics immorally motivated, and, in a
circumstance, immoral politics morally motivated. That is complicated.
Student: Could you say more about that? Immoral politics morally motivated, an example?
Strauss: No, I never speak about politics.
[Laughter]
Strauss: But I think the last elections were quite instructive.36
[Laughter]
Student: I am still worried a little bit, [inaudible], it would seem that the
Machiavellian resort to prudence and the calculation as to what characteristic is to be employed in a given situation resolves itself into unprincipled
behavior, so flexible…
Strauss: Yes, sure, that is perfectly correct, Machiavelli is unprincipled
because he thinks you should use both virtue and vice just as circumstances
recommend. But there is a principle here, indicated by his use of the word
In the presidential election of 1972, President Richard M. Nixon won reelection, carrying fortynine of fifty states. He defeated Democratic candidate George McGovern.
36
Leo Strauss on Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
459
virtù. Virtù consists in using both virtue and vice as circumstances recommend. He questions the principles of morality, without any question.
Student: I have trouble understanding how a man could operate so flexibly and still conceive of himself as an identifiable thing and therefore be
peaceful with himself. In that sense…
Strauss: Why do people employ tax lawyers? I believe because there are
so-called loopholes and some loopholes are permitted and some loopholes
are forbidden. A decent man would not use forbidden loopholes but he would
use—most of them, surely, would use permitted loopholes. But permitted
loopholes are not something in between forbidden loopholes and something
which is perfectly straightforward? Does this not apply to other human
actions, that there are borderline cases? And especially if one’s enemies come
in, would this not be a further complicating factor?
Student: Are you in effect saying that Plato’s argument against tyranny
really has no practical bearing? Because it seems to me that his hypothetic
argument is that somehow tyranny, tyrannical man is always in some way
fundamentally dissatisfied.
Strauss: And to which I can only give an equally general answer: in the
moment you show me the possibility of the philosopher-king I accept your
argument. But if the philosopher-king is a problematic being, his opposite
pole, the tyrant, is also a problematic being. I mean you don’t have to convince
me that a tyrant is an abominable creature, I only have to read Suetonius’s life
of Nero if I am not satisfied with what I read about Stalin or Hitler to see that.
Terrible. But the question is whether the complete absence of any admixture
of the opposite, tyranny, is possible. If Nero stands at the nude corpse of his
mother and he had her murdered and says, I didn’t know that I had such a
beautiful mother!37 Wonderful boy, huh?! But that is not a typical action of
tyrants, because it is a wholly unpolitical action, complete senseless misuse
of the power which he had and which he was unable to use properly. There is
no possible justification.
I hate to return to the subject with which I opened today’s meeting, that
owing to my bad bodily condition I was not able to elaborate a lecture on
Machiavelli and to have a discussion as I would have loved to have. I must
now terminate it, because I am too tired, I am very sorry, but it can’t be
helped. But it was very nice meeting you.
37
Cassius Dio, Roman History 62.14.2.
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Book Review: On Human Nature
4 61
Roger Scruton, On Human Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2017, 151 pp., $22.90 (hardcover).
J. A. Colen
Princeton University
[email protected]
On Human Nature is not Roger Scruton’s most profound philosophical book,
which would probably be either Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the
Erotic (1986), largely ignored in academia, or the more recent The Soul of the
Word (2016). But On Human Nature is certainly Scruton’s most beautiful
piece. It is a short book, at merely 144 small pages, based on a series of lectures he gave in the fall of 2103 at Princeton. This “revised version of the three
Charles E. Test memorial lectures,” to which he adds an additional lecture on
reverence, is “at best,” as he himself states, an abridged version of his ideas; he
does not attempt to deal with the obvious difficulties into which the reader
may stumble. The book is therefore a summary, one that points toward the
more extensive The Soul of the Word or that looks ahead to “later attempts.”
Scruton is a famous (or infamous) British writer and philosopher, member of the Royal Institute and fellow at several other think thanks. He is
also a self-exiled scholar, living in the countryside, but one who nonetheless enjoys a regular presence in newspaper headlines and publishing houses
for writing on a variety of subjects: art in general and music in particular;
modern philosophy in general and Spinoza and Kant in particular; but also
notorious dead and living intellectuals, novelists and composers, the Cold
War and the fallacies of Communism, to mention just a few. He feels more at
home, however, when writing against the current on subjects such as animal
rights (where we find his deepest reflections on personhood), global warming (where we find his deepest reflections on cosmology), hunting (where
© 2017 Interpretation, Inc.
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we find his deepest thoughts on animals), wine, culture, and education, old
nations and the birth of the new federal European republic—that is, “against”
any imaginable politically correct view that should indeed be questioned if
we want to avoid the pervasive conformism that has taken over contemporary academia. This constant challenging of the dominant views of our
increasingly secularist society made him an “enfant terrible” that some find
immensely entertaining, and others altogether outrageous. The truth is, he
might be both.
According to his own moving account in Gentle Regrets, this did not
come naturally to Scruton. Faced with the turmoil in France of May 1968, he
decided to become a conservative and, finding that the British conservative
tradition was curiously lacking, he resorted to a bouquet of many thinkers
such as Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, and T. S. Eliot, among others.
Notwithstanding, born and raised in Oxford and trained in analytical
philosophy, he never abandoned his conviction that all there is, or all that
philosophy can deal with, is what language can allow us to talk about (Ryle,
Ayer, Brentano, and even Russell remain his main philosophical references).
He also asserts, in A Short History of Modern Philosophy, the fruitfulness
of the “standpoint of analytical philosophy” (Short History, vii) and of the
late Wittgenstein’s antiprivate view of language (On Human Nature, 53, etc.).
Moreover, he sees “the main current in modern philosophy as springing from
the Cartesian theory of the subject, and from the consequent divorce between
subject and object” (Short History, viii). This current, he argues, runs through
all modern philosophy, up to “Wittgenstein’s detailed demonstration of the
untenability of the Cartesian vision” that, by the same token, discredited
modern phenomenology and brought “a period of philosophical history to
an end” (ix). Despite occasional quotes from Plato or Aristotle, Scruton never
even considered the possibility of a return to greener pastures. We will see
how this deep-rooted conviction makes of On Human Nature an amazing
book in its attempt to overcome this straitjacket, but also how this sets clear
limits on the book’s achievements: Scruton often finds himself falling into
the pitfalls of positivism and historicism.
First and foremost, On Human Nature is a surprising book because it
asserts that there is such a thing as human nature, an obvious biological
truth that has nonetheless been questioned by every current of historicism,
from Burke’s questioning of the natural man to Foucault’s more recent “discourses” (13). Burke considered the rights of man as unreal as unicorns or
witches—and he opposed to them the rights of Englishman, Frenchman,
Book Review: On Human Nature
463
and German—while Foucault’s discourses “aimed at discrediting common
prejudice” about our “essence” (14). It is also immensely salutary that Scruton’s approach begins with the statement that humankind has not only the
(partial) nature of an animal, but also the nature of an (embodied) person
(30)—in opposition to all Kantian, Hegelian, and merely poetical attempts
to begin with the human consciousness. In this way, Scruton avoids all
reductionist attempts at explaining the higher out of the lower or, in other
words, all easy dissolutions of man into evolutionary, Freudian, sociologizing
(Marxist et al.), and other simplifying schemes.
On Human Nature is composed of four chapters: “Human Kind” (1–49);
“Human Relations” (50–79); “The Moral Life” (80–112); and a later-added
chapter “Sacred Obligations” (113–44). The largest by far is the first one. There,
Scruton shows the limits of attempts at explaining man through evolutionary
psychology. Resorting to ethology, game theory, the role of Lebensraum (9),
Rigoletto (10), Kant’s famous analysis of laughter (19–25), and the smile of
a face painted on a canvas (30–34), Scruton ends by countering all reductionist views of man with his peculiar view of intentionality and personhood
(34–49). One possible reading of this book is, therefore, a (somewhat desperate or, on the contrary, hope and faith-filled [see 47–49]) effort to rescue man
from all those who believe that evolutionary psychology provides the only
scientific and, therefore, the only true explanation of the behavior of man.
The next chapter, “Human Relations,” draws on Kant and especially on
Darwall’s “second-person standpoint” (50). Using with some freedom Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” terminology, Scruton here resorts to two arguments: a
first that is based on language (i.e., Wittgenstein: see 53) where he asserts
that, without the other, an intimate and untransferable feeling such as “I am
in pain” would be a meaningless statement; and a second that is based on
a somewhat cavalier Hegelian account of self-awareness (53–55). The Hegelian recognition accorded to the self by the other is then equated to Kant’s
paralogisms of pure reason (Critique of Pure Reason, part 2, chapter 1) and
to Husserl’s phenomenology. The fecundity of this particular combination
of I-Thou existentialism (we are by the regard of the other), together with
Wittgenstein’s contention that the privilege of the I belongs to the grammar
of self-reference (68), is demonstrated ad oculus in a leisurely comment on
desire (69) and the decentering of the passions of the soul (71–75) in sexual
relationships and in art (Giorgione’s Tempest being the example: see 76–77).
The core of Scruton’s view of man is briefly presented through the idea
of “personhood,” here taken much farther than a mere juridical concept
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(more on this at the end). Nevertheless, the conflation of so many different
and opposed philosophies (Boethius and Locke, e.g.: see 76) makes the book
prey to accusations of inconsistency and contradictions. Scruton wonders:
“Should we be worried by this? My answer is no. The possibility of divergence
between our two ways of counting people…does not subvert the practices
that have been built on those rival schemes” (78).
The third chapter is an extension of the previous one. Scruton here
searches for a foundation for “morality,” but without ever explaining what
morality is. The main distinction here is between “stuff” and “things.” Contrarily to water, Scruton’s horse Desmond cannot be cut in two, or he would
lose his individuality (81–82): “things” have a deep individuality. Nonetheless, Scruton says, there are animal “things” that have awareness but lack
self-awareness, that is, the capacity to praise, blame, and forgive, all actions
that only self-aware things can will. Scruton however points to an exception:
pollution and taboo in the Greek tragedies; in other words, there are offenses
that do not depend on our will (thus the example of Oedipus, the offense
imposed on him by the gods, Oedipus’s sense of pollution, contamination,
and his final acceptance of the punishment) (86–88). Such a case allows him
to grant some “measure of historical variation” (88), the essential features
of morality being universal, but with enough margin to ground the “moral
community” (89) of the Anglo-Saxon practices of common law (90) and the
general theories of moral sentiment from Adam Smith to Peter Singer, but also
the theories of Parfit and others “who speak for our times” (92) through their
lifeboat and trolley dilemmas (92–96). Once more, all this syncretism could
confuse the reader if Scruton had not spelled out his “fundamental intuition”:
that morality exists (in part) because it allows us to live with others through
negotiation (98). Even Aristotle’s Ethics is but a showcase of how morality or
ethics really means taking full responsibility for our own actions and making
reasons “my reasons” (101), a consequence of a constructivist approach to
morality, based on the I-Thou relationship. Should we be concerned about the
fact that Aristotle, Kant, and the Bible are all present in very different or even
“rival schemes”? Scruton’s answer is again: no. Virtues, he grants, are “not
available outside a tightly woven social context,” although, according to him,
virtues are not hard to understand, but hard only to practice.
As we noted, the final chapter is a newcomer. Scruton here criticizes
all egalitarianism that upholds a benevolent conception of the state (114):
such positions, he argues, fail to take into account our embodied selves (the
example, again, being erotic love) and the fact that they are based on what, in
The Uses of Pessimism, Scruton dubs the “born free” fallacy: noumenal selves
Book Review: On Human Nature
465
do not come to the world, we are born in a world of encumbered ties and
attachments (116). Scruton’s attempt to challenge these two objections make
the most interesting part of the book, although it comes late (117–25 are on
sexual desire and 125–43 are about religion and the moral life).
Scruton says that “we are not entitled to reify the self as a distinctive
object of reference” (On Human Nature, 33), which means that the subject
“is not part of the empirical world” and does not exist in “another realm”
(32). But we may wonder, “is the subject a real part of the real world?” The
question, Scruton argues, is “misconstrued,” since language does not support it. The self is an “emergent feature of the organism” (37), like colors on a
canvas, and no other input is required but the biology of the body (38). There
is no “impassable gap” between man and other animals: Wallace is wrong
and Darwin is right (cf. 14 with 66). “From Plato to Sartre,” many thinkers
presented different views of this idea, but they almost all “agreed in searching
for a philosophical account rather than a scientific account” (28). In fact, “we
are objects, caught in the currents of causality” (66–67) and if our responses
to others seem to aim at a horizon that “passes beyond the body,” to the being
that incarnates, this is no more than a “compelling” illusion that is the root of
the “idea of the soul, of the true but hidden self that is veiled by the flesh” (67).
In the end, Scruton is very much a modern man, for whom a philosophy
opposed to the account of science (32) is just a façon de parler (40). As veiled
in the flesh as the soul is, the hidden assumption here is that all that (modern,
obviously) philosophy can do is speculate about how we talk about “things”
and “stuff.” By taking as our starting point modern philosophy and modern
language, however, we might be simply clarifying and making increasingly
more formal and exact our own prejudices. Philosophy per se is not historical, but today’s philosophy could perhaps begin by undertaking a (Socratic)
examination of the works that constitute the history of philosophy: there we
can find the sources of our confused, contradictory current opinions that
pervade our common language. Scruton takes as good some kind of Averroistic double truth that is also suggested here, in passing, as congenial to
modern philosophy (48): he believes that science as we know it leaves something unexplained, but the solution is to be found in a supplement of poetical
and philosophical account of human things.
Whatever flaws we may find in this book, we should not make the mistake
of thinking them too important. Even the book’s most obvious inconsistencies and silences are mere ink spills on a beautifully painted canvas. Scruton’s
unfailing humanity pervades all its pages.
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Book Review: Two Works on Rawls
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Thom Brooks and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds., Rawls’s Political Liberalism.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2015, viii + 206 pp., $32 (paperback),
$95 (hardcover).
Jon Mandle and David A. Reidy, eds., The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2015, xxiii + 897 pp., $175 (hardcover).
Jerom e C . Foss
Saint Vincent College
[email protected]
Do John Rawls’s ideas continue to matter? I was recently told by the editor of
an important academic journal that nobody wants to publish works on Rawls
anymore. I imagine this particular editor does not speak for all gatekeepers
to academic journals and books, but even if he is correct that publishers are
tiring of Rawls scholarship, plenty of scholars remain interested enough in
Rawls to continue writing and reading about his contributions to political
theory. The collection of essays edited by Thom Brooks and Martha Nussbaum titled Rawls’s Political Liberalism and the encyclopedic volume of
Rawlsian thought assembled by Jon Mandle and David Reidy for The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon provide ample evidence that interest in Rawls is alive
and well.
Perhaps if Rawls had given us only his 1971 book A Theory of Justice we
would have reason to think his ideas to be of historic interest, but not particularly weighty in contemporary discussions of political theory. But Rawls
continued thinking through his argument and, much to his credit, responded
to many critics in the years following Theory, which eventually led to the publication in 1993 of Political Liberalism along with a host of other essays and
lectures at the end of his career, all of which help to keep Rawls’s ideas relevant
among students of political philosophy and, more generally, political scientists
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and legal scholars. The importance of Rawls’s broad appeal should not be
underestimated, and it is worth recognizing that Thom Brooks and Martha
Nussbaum, though their backgrounds are in political philosophy, both currently hold appointments in law schools; Brooks teaches in the law program
at Durham University and Nussbaum splits her time between the philosophy
department and the law school at the University of Chicago. Appropriately,
the essays in their book focus not on Theory but on Political Liberalism.
The occasion for Brooks and Nussbaum to edit a volume examining the
legacy of Rawls’s ideas is in fact the twentieth (though by the time the book
went to press it was the twenty-second) anniversary of Political Liberalism.
About a quarter of the book consists of a long introduction by Nussbaum, after
which appear essays by Onora O’Neill, Paul Weithman, Jeremy Waldron, Thom
Brooks, and Frank Michelman. As with most volumes, each essay is an independent argument and does not really speak to the other essays, which makes
it difficult to say what the book adds up to. Each chapter, including Nussbaum’s
introduction, is largely interpretative rather than descriptive of Rawls’s latter
work, but the interpretations offer differing accounts of Political Liberalism’s
purpose and importance. All the essays are generally favorable to Rawlsian
principles and all but one embrace Rawls’s style of political philosophy.
Nussbaum’s introduction to the book is difficult to categorize. The word
“introduction” does not adequately capture what goes on in the first fifty-plus
pages of the book. Nussbaum opens with an account of Political Liberalism’s
importance and then moves on to offer a brief account of Rawls’s main ideas,
his books’ engagement with the history of political philosophy, the development of his ideas, revisions he was not able to complete prior to his death,
various critiques or interpretations that have been put forward by scholars,
and a handful of ways in which she thinks his work needs to be improved
upon. Nussbaum’s prose is clear, something one wishes to see more of among
those who write on Rawls, but there are reasons to be wary of trusting her as
a reliable guide to Rawls’s thought. She is trying to do so much in the opening
pages of the book that nothing aside from the prose’s clarity is done to the full
satisfaction of the reader. One who expects a refresher on Rawls’s main ideas,
for example, will be met with a “focus on a small number of issues,” some of
which are clearly of more interest to Nussbaum than to Rawls, such as the
place of the family in liberal thought (1).
The other sections of Nussbaum’s opening essay are likewise interesting
but on the whole not fully convincing, especially the section on the history
of political philosophy. It opens promisingly enough, with the claim that
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469
Political Liberalism is an “extended rejoinder” to Hobbes’s Leviathan, but
this claim, insightful as it could be, is an assertion without much in the way
of detailed evidence or examples (10). Given the nature of an introduction,
the broad-brush approach is understandable and could be forgiven if not for
the fact that Nussbaum’s painting of Hobbes presents if not a false picture,
then a highly skewed one. Without much explanation she depicts Hobbes as
a divine-right theorist, ignoring the important role that consent plays in the
establishment of a social compact, an irony given the fact that consent is on
display in the one sentence she quotes from Leviathan (11). Further troubling
is her account of Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration, in which she greatly
softens Locke’s exclusion of Catholics from the general duty of tolerating religious belief (11).
Perhaps Hobbes is a divine-right theorist and perhaps Locke did mean
for his readers to tolerate Catholics, but these are debatable points that
Nussbaum presents as straightforward readings, leading one to wonder how
reliable she is in her presentation of Rawls. For example, when she claims
that the duty of civility (which is the basis of public reason) is a moral ideal
without legal status, and that “there is absolutely no question of citizens being
restricted in their speech, or given lower civic status, on account of their nonobservance of this ethical duty,” one has to wonder why Rawls is never this
clear about the matter. What Nussbaum offers as a factual account of Rawls is
really an interpretation. Perhaps her reading is plausible, but it seems only just
to acknowledge that Rawls leaves some room for doubt about the legal status
of public reason; indeed, he seems to suggest that laws are legitimate, which
is to say constitutional, only when consistent with public reason. Instead of
acknowledging that room for debate exists on this point, Nussbaum suggests
parenthetically that those who worry that Rawls means for public reason
to have some legal teeth, presumably enforced by the Supreme Court, have
“misunderstood the nature of Rawls’s recommendation” (33). I for one am
not sure they have, but I acknowledge it is a debatable point. One wishes as
much from the book’s editor in her introduction.
The first, more focused essay of the book is by Onora O’Neill, professor emeritus at Cambridge University, who wrote her dissertation under the
direction of Rawls at Harvard. Her chapter provides a general comparison of
her former teacher’s two major works. Theory, she explains, is more abstract
and contractarian, focused as it is on a conceptual framework of justice. Political Liberalism, by contrast, argues that principles of justice can be constructed
with reference to an existing political culture using reasonable procedures.
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The latter approach emphasizes the importance of citizenship, a geographically bounded polity, democratic institutions, and general acceptance of
liberal ideas. O’Neill finds the development in Rawls’s thinking troubling
insofar as its context is internal to a specific political entity and leaves little
room for sharing a global consensus on justice among nations, or peoples.
In other words Rawls’s later work is less universal than his earlier work and
O’Neill ends by suggesting that we make a return to the Rawls of Theory.
In his essay Paul Weithman, another student of Rawls who now teaches
philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, argues that Theory and Political
Liberalism are not as far apart as most scholars believe. Contrary to O’Neill’s
account, Weithman maintains that Rawls remains fully committed to the
principles of justice as presented in Theory. The purpose of Political Liberalism
is not to recast the principles or their defense, but only to revise the account
of stability from part 3 of Theory. On Weithman’s telling, what appears to be
a turn from justice to political legitimacy and constitutionalism in the latter
half of Rawls’s career should not be interpreted as a compromise of his hopes
or a backing away from the egalitarian demands of the difference principle,
which would allow difference in wealth only when it works to the advantage
of those who have less. The more mature Rawls, Weithman explains, remains
committed to the ideals of his earlier career, with a more plausible means of
persuading those disinclined to accept justice as fairness, the name he gives
to his abstract liberal theory, to at least recognize the importance of a shared
conception of justice for settling important political questions. Rawls is a far
more consistent thinker in Weithman’s view than in O’Neill’s.
The essay most critical of Rawls comes from Jeremy Waldron of the New
York University School of Law. Waldron limits his argument to a discussion of
public reason, but his comments have implications for Rawls’s particular style
of political philosophy. Interestingly, Waldron does not rehearse Rawls’s theoretical account of public reason directly; rather, he attempts to arrive at how
it might look in practice. He narrows his discussion to Nussbaum’s position,
that public reason is a moral ideal rather than a legal requirement, but even as
an ethical standard he finds it problematic insofar as it relies on an unrealistic
understanding of human motives in political life. People accept or desire laws
for all kinds of reasons, many of which cannot be widely shared, and it is
difficult to imagine why we should expect anything different. Additionally,
Waldron takes issue with the claim that many of the reasons people might
want to raise in support of a law, such as religious reasons, cannot be widely
understood in a large pluralist polity like the United States. Just because a
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reason is not held in common does not mean it cannot be understood, and
reciprocity ought to require as much from the listener as the speaker when it
comes to public discussions. In short, the range of publicly acceptable reasons
for or against laws ought to be far broader than Rawls allows.
Waldron’s critique of public reason, as mentioned above, points to a much
larger concern he has with the type of political philosophy that Rawls and
many of his students advocate. Rawls limits political philosophy to the practical role of identifying in the abstract principles of justice that could serve as
guides of legitimacy for a democratic constitutional order. While Waldron
does not deny that this approach has its uses, he worries that it truncates
political philosophy to the job of judging which public reasons are legitimate
while denying any role for political philosophy in determining what is in
fact true. His chief example is torture. When national security is at stake,
can Rawlsian public reason alone persuade the government to refrain from
torturing those it suspects of having crucial information? Waldron suspects
that what is needed in such a circumstance is a definitive argument that, in
truth, torture is simply wrong and not simply offensive to a Rawlsian-type
overlapping consensus.
The essay by Thom Brooks returns to the issue of stability, particularly
the place of an overlapping consensus in achieving that stability as Rawls
conceives it in his later work. Brooks argues that critics of the overlapping
consensus as a source of stability usually hold one of two views. One set of
critics believes that Rawls did not have to depart from Theory in order to
shore up part 3’s account of stability. The other set argues that something
outside of Theory is in fact needed but the overlapping consensus is too fragile to do the work Rawls asks of it. Brooks holds that while neither view is
entirely correct, Rawls may in fact improve upon the overlapping consensus
as a device for helping to secure stability by combining it with a more robust
defense of goods or capabilities guaranteed to citizens. He draws heavily here
on much of Nussbaum’s work. This chapter requires a broader knowledge of
the secondary scholarship on Rawls than the other essays in the volume.
The concluding chapter is by Frank Michelman, professor at Harvard Law
School. As I have indicated in a couple of places above, Political Liberalism is
not simply concerned with ethical matters; Rawls wants to give his principles
of justice legal backing. Michelman’s chapter shows how this can in fact be
done, and not surprisingly, in America, it is through the Supreme Court.
Michelman asks us to consider a Rawlsian judge—Judge Rawls—who is committed to implementing the basic ideas of Philosopher Rawls. Judge Rawls
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would recognize that certain basic liberties, particularly those of conscience,
are fundamental and that state restrictions on these liberties are to be barred
or greatly curtailed. Other liberties that are not basic are within the reach of
government when it is exercising its power, in accord with Rawlsian theory, to
assure the basic economic and social equality of a people. Michelman asks us
to consider what Judge Rawls would do when presented with two cases, one
involving a prohibition on assisted suicide and the other a mandate to purchase healthcare insurance. Using texts from Political Liberalism, Michelman
shows us why Judge Rawls would invalidate the law against assisted suicide
and uphold the law requiring everyone to purchase insurance. So much for
Political Liberalism just being a work of ethics and not legal theory.
Taken as a whole, Brooks and Nussbaum’s volume succeeds in offering
scholars of Rawls a partial survey of how those inclined to agree with his
main ideas understand Political Liberalism two decades after its publication.
For someone new to the field, the book will provide a quick snapshot of six
well-established scholars’ views of Rawls’s later career. The book’s essays,
however, would be difficult to follow for anyone not already thoroughly
familiar with Rawls’s theory and even much of the secondary literature that
has been building for almost half a century.
Thankfully, acquainting oneself with Rawls’s corpus and its chief interlocutors has recently become a less difficult business. Those new to Rawls,
and even seasoned veterans, can benefit from Jon Mandle and David Reidy’s
The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon, which as the title suggests is an encyclopedia
for those interested in learning more about the singular language and main
players involved in the world of Rawls and Rawlsian scholarship. The volume contains over two hundred entries, alphabetically listed, beginning with
Abortion and concluding with Ludwig Wittgenstein. The book also contains
an introduction by the editors that, in fewer than ten pages, provides a very
helpful biographical sketch of Rawls’s life and a thematic overview of his
work. A novice to Rawlsian scholarship will also benefit from the bibliography that follows the many entries as a beginning point for the vast forest they
are entering.
The entries cover ideas from Rawls’s theory such as Law of Peoples, themes
of his work like Democracy and even Love, thinkers who influenced him such
as Immanuel Kant, critics like H. L. A. Hart and Robert Nozick with whom
he engaged in public discussion, and some of his more well-known students,
including Samuel Freeman. Of interest given the other book reviewed here,
Mandle and Reidy include an entry for Martha Nussbaum, which explains
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473
similarities and differences in her thinking compared to that of Rawls. The
entries tend to be two to four pages, though some of the more important
themes, like Public Reason, are given slightly more space. Though the book
has many contributors, including Frank Michelman and Paul Weithman, the
entries are uniformly readable and informative.
The editors of any encyclopedic undertaking will always have to make
choices about what to include, and the shape and scope of the final product
will reflect those choices. I, for example, was surprised to find that the volume
does not include an entry for Jürgen Habermas, though he is mentioned in
several other entries. I was also hoping for an entry on Judicial Review and
Political Philosophy. Both of these, to my mind, are more pertinent to Rawls’s
thought than the environment, which Rawls never addresses but which is
nonetheless given an entry. Of course, not everything that anybody could
possibly want can be included in such a volume, and there is much more of
what one would expect that is included than is left out. On the whole Mandle
and Reidy have assembled a very helpful guide for those wishing to better
understand particular ideas or debates associated with Rawls. The entries,
in brief fashion, provide a useful introduction that will aid readers of Rawls’s
works and the secondary literature surrounding them in the difficult task of
coming to grips with a complex thinker.
All of this of course implies that we will continue living in a world where
people will want to come to grips with Rawls. I think we will. The question is
not so much will Rawls continue to influence students of philosophy—in their
arena he may in fact be a passing trend—but whether his ideas will shape the
way average citizens approach political life. It is unlikely that they will ever
speak in terms of reflective equilibriums, overlapping consensuses, or comprehensive doctrines, but insofar as they accept laws and judicial decisions that
reflect the ideals of Rawlsian theory, or some theory derivative of Rawls, his
work will continue to be relevant and studied. That four of the six contributors
to the Brooks and Nussbaum volume teach at law schools and that Cambridge
University Press thought it worthwhile to publish an encyclopedia on Rawls’s
thought are both indications that the ideas of A Theory of Justice and Political
Liberalism will remain influential for the foreseeable future.
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Book Review: Cicero’s Skepticism and His Recovery of Political Philosophy
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Walter Nicgorski, Cicero’s Skepticism and His Recovery of Political Philosophy.
Recovering Political Philosophy Series. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016,
283 pp., $159.00 (hardcover).
Dav i d F o t t
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
[email protected]
This book is more than an addition to the growing list of scholarship over
the last twenty-five to thirty years that has taken Cicero seriously as a philosopher. For one thing, the author, Walter Nicgorski, helped to pave the way
for this resurgence with an essay in 1978 that broke free from the historicist
mold of looking to Cicero mainly for information about Hellenistic schools
of philosophy. His decades of work have come to fruition in a book that
demands to be read not only by scholars of Cicero but also by those interested in natural law or the relative merits of the theoretical and practical
ways of life.
Nicgorski’s ambitious goal is to understand Cicero’s life and thought as
a whole. He maintains that Cicero’s “thought about all significant matters is
affected in important ways by his orientation toward action and ultimately
political action of the highest sort” (5). This “practical perspective” is “an
advantaged and true perspective and therefore the basis for life-directing wisdom insofar as that can be attained” (6–7). Here is Nicgorski’s interpretation
of the “Socratic turn,” initially proclaimed by Cicero, in which Socrates “first
called philosophy down from heaven” and made it address ethics and politics
(Tusculan Disputations 5.10). From the “practical perspective,” according to
Nicgorski’s Cicero, “the distinction between good and evil” becomes “the
foundation of philosophy” (6). Nicgorski cites On Divination 2.2 for that
claim, but in that passage Cicero avoids endorsing it by saying passively that
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“the foundation of philosophy has been placed [positum esset] in the ends of
good and bad things” without noting who placed it there.
Nicgorski cogently argues that Cicero’s skepticism is rooted in his recognition of the uncertainty of sense perception, and that his skepticism does not
preclude judgments of probability that provide a basis for action, including
the judgment that the highest good is virtue (16, citing On Divination 2.2).
Although Cicero devotes a book, Academica, to the possibility of knowledge, Nicgorski explains, somewhat convincingly, that Cicero is concerned
with complicated epistemological discussions insofar as they have practical
relevance. And yet—why, as Nicgorski recognizes, did Cicero devote “unsurpassable care” to revising Academica for a second edition (53n80, citing
Letters to Atticus 326)?
Cicero’s philosophizing has two “modes,” each of which is Socratic: a
“critical doubting and questing spirit” and a spirit for “guiding and consoling” humans in life (60, 64). At first Nicgorski claims that the former mode
is “primary, both logically and chronologically,” because the truth must be
discovered before it can be applied (65). But because questing for truth always
proceeds from a particular situation, the rhetorical mode may need “to precede the critical in some ways and to play an important role in stirring such
inquiry” (70). It appears, then, that philosophy begins and ends in rhetoric.
But does Nicgorski’s Cicero run the risk of having philosophy drown in rhetoric? In one dialogue, Cicero has Scipio Aemilianus ascribe “perfect wisdom”
to Cato the Elder (Cato the Elder on Old Age 4). As Nicgorski admits, “Cato
was no philosopher” and was even “wary” of Greek philosophers; nevertheless, he concludes that “the complete wisdom of Cicero’s Cato is the measure
of complete philosophy for Cicero” (75). Nicgorski implies that philosophy
contributes nothing essential to “complete wisdom.” He champions the
Socratic way of life (truths applied in life) more than the Socratic method of
question and answer, but apparently neither is required to take “the measure
of complete philosophy.” How could Cicero agree? Nicgorski overlooks the
possibility that Cicero, through his character Scipio, is telling a noble lie for
the benefit of his readers. In other words, the relation of the rhetorical mode
to the critical mode may be more complicated than Nicgorski admits.
Next Nicgorski turns to the subject of duties and virtue. He maintains
that Cicero sees Stoicism as the school “most faithful to Socrates regarding
the supreme good,” virtue (97). Indeed Cicero advocates Stoic morals—notably natural law—in a number of his works. Why does he do so? Nicgorski
cites Ernest Fortin’s thesis that Cicero appeals to natural law for its political
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477
utility and not for its likely truth, and he tries to refute that thesis by tracing
it to another scholar’s claim that Stoics did not employ natural law (135n37).
But Fortin’s thesis is independent of that claim. If Nicgorski’s argument
stopped there, it would be lacking, because Cicero’s accounts of natural law
evince traces of his skepticism and concern for political utility (e.g., On the
Laws 1.18–19, 37). Instead he tries to reconcile Cicero’s skepticism with his
accounts of natural law by raising the question of how rigid a doctrine of natural law needs to be (107–8 and relevant endnotes). It is a fascinating attempt,
and everyone interested in natural law should weigh its merits. It seems to
me that he has not fully explained how commands and prohibitions can be
issued if not in rigid formulations, and such commands and prohibitions are
part of the most famous account of natural law, given by the character Laelius
in book 3 of On the Republic. Nicgorski comes closest to an explanation with
the following statement: “Duties, articulated by the prudent person [especially the statesman] working from the ordinary horizon, are the specific and
concrete expressions of the natural law” (108). Thus natural law would not
depend on a divine lawgiver. The thesis of Cicero’s On Duties is that what is
honorable or right and what is useful never conflict. Again Nicgorski interprets Cicero as being straightforwardly committed to the thesis—despite
evidence to the contrary (On Duties 2.58, Letters to Friends 4.2.2).1
Nicgorski offers a valuable treatment of Cicero’s political philosophy in
On the Republic and On the Laws. How to understand the relation of those
works to the similarly titled works of Plato is a long-standing question. Nicgorski sees Cicero as mostly supportive of Plato’s approach to political things;
Cicero’s main disagreement concerns Plato’s lack of attention to statesmanship in his Republic and Laws. To some scholars, the importance that Cicero
assigns to consent in politics brings him closer to modern thinking than
to Plato. The Latin for “consent,” consensus, is probably better translated as
“assent” or “agreement” in most cases because “consent” is too suggestive of
the modern social contract. Apparently Nicgorski disagrees with that point
of translation, but he admirably clarifies the substantive points through careful analyses of (1) Cicero’s use of consensus, (2) his account of the naturalness
of human society, and (3) his view that injustice is more responsible than a
lack of consent for the defectiveness of bad regimes.
I have presented this evidence in “How Machiavellian Is Cicero?,” in The Arts of Rule: Essays in
Honor of Harvey C. Mansfield, ed. Sharon R. Krause and Mary Ann McGrail (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2009), 161. See also Douglas Kries, “On the Intention of Cicero’s De Officiis,” Review of Politics 65
(Autumn 2003): 375–93. Nicgorski cites both pieces but does not directly respond to the claims.
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Nicgorski’s final chapter, the most provocative, concerns statesmanship,
about which he has already claimed that “consistently throughout Cicero’s
writings, it is presented as the greatest necessity and the highest human calling” (114). That conclusion follows “from the Socratic practical perspective”
of one who “seeks to read the message of nature in the light of commonly
evident utilities” (206). Of course, Socrates avoided political leadership. Thus
Nicgorski’s Cicero blames Socrates for neglecting political responsibility and
the art of rhetoric, and Cicero’s model statesman must be “a matter of aspiration” rather than an actual person (himself included) (207). As Nicgorski
explains the qualities needed in a statesman, he falls into the trap of treating
Scipio Aemilianus (in On the Republic) and Lucius Licinius Crassus (in On
the Orator) as Cicero’s spokesmen instead of participants in dialogues from
which Cicero expects us to learn by questioning every speaker’s claims. Nevertheless, Nicgorski gives a sharp analysis of the prudence that statesmanship
requires, including the ways in which prudence both leads and depends on
the political community. Cicero’s ambiguous treatment of glory as the statesman’s chief reward becomes clear at the end of this chapter.
As some of my previous remarks have suggested, I find Nicgorski unconvincing on two large issues: the status of contemplation and the relation of
philosophy to the political community. On the former point, Nicgorski
appears not to be fully consistent. For the most part, Nicgorski’s Cicero is so
occupied by the “practical perspective” that he treats all intellectual virtue—
presumably including contemplation—as a “manifestation of moral virtue”
(75–76; cf. 78–79, 232, 242n84, 246). But at one point his Cicero recognizes
contemplation as “the most divine of activities,” albeit an activity in which our
duties do not usually allow us to indulge (116); and at the end of the book, Nicgorski suggests that philosophy “can flower out to a fuller and more detailed
moral and political wisdom and even beyond, to a greater understanding of all
things” (246). Here he describes philosophy as “a way of life having the object
of understanding the nature of things,” and the “Socratic turn” to ethics as
being meant “to give philosophy a different primary object and initial focus”
(247; italics mine). Can those claims be squared with one another?
On the whole, Nicgorski’s Cicero recognizes no essential tension between
philosophy and politics (for one exception, see 242n83). He does maintain
that the Epicurean rejection of public life is harmful to the city and should
not be discussed (23, 121–23). But Nicgorski’s Cicero is so much at home with
his fellow Romans, so incapable of writing anything other than what he finds
to be probably true, that Nicgorski must deny Cicero’s explicit claim to be
Book Review: Cicero’s Skepticism and His Recovery of Political Philosophy
479
faithful to Socrates by concealing his opinion in philosophic matters (76–77,
citing Tusculan Disputations 5.11). Yet in the same work, Cicero insists that
philosophy inherently “flees the multitude” because most people are suspicious of it (Tusculan Disputations 2.4).
Those reservations aside, Nicgorski makes a convincing case that Cicero
does not rank the theoretical way of life over the practical way of life. Neither Cicero’s life nor his philosophical works allow us to associate him with
Plato and Aristotle in that respect. For Nicgorski to establish that conclusion
in such rich detail—covering the entirety of Cicero’s philosophy, not falling
victim to historicism or relativism, not devoting unnecessary effort to tracing
Cicero’s sources, displaying an encyclopedic command of secondary material—is a great achievement.
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Book Review: The Book of Job
4 81
Robert D. Sacks, The Book of Job: A New Translation with In-Depth Commentary. Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion, 2016, xv + 311 pp., $29.95 (paper).
Stev en H. Fr a n k el
Xavier University
[email protected]
Few contemporary authors have taught us as much about the quarrel
between Jerusalem and Athens as Robert D. Sacks. Sacks’s translation and
commentary on Genesis first appeared in Interpretation over the course of
five years, from 1979 to 1984.1 More than a decade later his translation and
commentary on the book of Job was published in Interpretation.2 These two
commentaries, along with Sacks’s primer for studying the Bible, titled Beginning Biblical Hebrew: Intentionality and Grammar, offer a guide for those
who wish to approach the Bible as a coherent work of uniquely profound
depth.3 Recently, Sacks revised and published his translation and commentary of the book of Job in a single volume that allows readers to appreciate
more fully the significance of his lifelong project.4
Robert Sacks, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990); originally serialized as “The Lion and the Ass: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis,” Interpretation 8
(1979–80): 29–101; 9 (1980–81): 1–82; 10 (1982): 67–212, 273–317; 11 (1983): 87–128, 249–74, 353–82; 12
(1984): 49–82, 141–92.
1
2
Sacks, The Book of Job with Commentary: A Translation for Our Time (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1999);
originally serialized in Interpretation 24 (1996–97): 135–70, 251–86; 25 (1997–98): 3–36, 155–80,
293–330; 26 (1998–99): 21–64.
3
Sacks, Beginning Biblical Hebrew: Intentionality and Grammar (Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion, 2008).
See my review in Interpretation 40, no. 3 (Winter 2014): 411–20.
4
Sacks, The Book of Job: A New Translation with In-Depth Commentary (Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion,
2016). Parenthetical page references are to this book unless otherwise indicated.
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Sacks’s project is nothing less than a guide for the perplexed, or rather,
for the skeptical contemporary reader who cannot bring himself to take seriously the Bible as an account of man’s place in the world. In his discussion of
the Hebrew word melitz (interpreter), Sacks remarks: “An interpreter’s function is to make the thoughts of each person intelligible to the other; thus
an interpreter must feel at home under [the horizon of each language], and
to that extent he must live beyond either one of them taken singly” (230).
Sacks’s task as a translator of the Bible is particularly challenging since he is
translating for an audience whose members have heard centuries of biblical
criticism. Perhaps the most complete criticism was promulgated by Spinoza,
whose Theologico-Political Treatise systematically attacks scripture’s account
of prophecy, law, and providence. What makes Spinoza’s account particularly
compelling is his knowledge of biblical Hebrew, which he uses to establish his
thesis that scripture is fundamentally incoherent, written by multiple, superstitious authors and compiled by redactors with various inconsistent political
goals. In light of this theological-political situation, and given the enduring
force of superstition in human affairs, Spinoza suggests reducing scripture’s
teaching to an easy-to-grasp moral doctrine of caritas.
Thanks in part to its success, Spinoza’s critique of scripture inevitably
hardened into a dogmatic approach. As Sacks observes, “Too often what
was once a living thought in the teacher becomes a hardened dogma for the
student—precisely because he cannot reach out to a horizon that is no longer available to him” (194). One such dogma is the belief in progress, and
the corresponding view that scholars can understand the text better than
the authors themselves. In response, Sacks develops a meticulous method
for reading scripture, which conscientiously avoids the assumption of the
reader’s superiority to the author. He approaches scripture with the presumption that it has something to teach us, even if the message is obscure. His
method of translation is imbued with the spirit of modesty and care such
that he prefers to admit ignorance rather than force an issue (cf. 123, 126, 155,
189, 285). Near the beginning of his commentary, he concedes: “It would be
hard to find many works of which the Italian expression ‘traddutore traditore’
(every translator a traitor) is more true than the book of Job. It is obscure both
in word and in grammatical form” (103). Similarly, he eschews all speculation about authorship because “it is totally unclear how much one can know
about such matters” (104, 205). At most, we can say that the book contains
many different voices and perspectives, much like the plays of Shakespeare.
Sacks sees little reason to explain this fact as anything other than evidence
of the wisdom and talent of the author. Indeed, if he can show that the text
Book Review: The Book of Job
483
is written with the greatest care, as a possession “set down for all time,” then
attempts to dismiss the book as a hasty compilation will be seen as betraying
the readers’ ignorance (171, cf. 220).
Biblical criticism, however, is not the only or even the most daunting
challenge for a translator of Job. Sacks’s account of Job must compete with the
most formidable modern interpretation presented by Thomas Hobbes, whose
very title, Leviathan, alludes to the central story told by God out of the whirlwind. Hobbes says that he chose the title to remind his readers of Job because
his vision of politics is consistent with the biblical view: “Hitherto I have set
forth the nature of man, whose pride and other passions have compelled him
to submit himself to government, together with the great power of his governor, whom I compared to Leviathan. . . where God having set forth the great
power of Leviathan called him King of the Proud” (Leviathan, chap. 28). The
key to understanding Hobbes’s analysis of politics is closely connected with
his reading of Job.
Sacks’s account of Eliphaz recalls Hobbes’s account of political life.
Indeed, the character of Eliphaz raises the possibility that “the world is
totally indifferent, if not essentially hostile to human life. Human concerns
for justice which remain within the plane of the human cannot be of cosmic
concern. It is all no more than a tent which by its outer surface looks much
like a solid structure, but which at the mere pull of a pin can crumble out
flat” (116). Hobbes fleshes out this account and proposes to strengthen the
walls of the city so that they resemble the scales of Leviathan, which form
“an impenetrable skin” so that the city “cannot be hurt by others” (285).
Although human art may at first glance appear to be an imitation of God’s
art, Hobbes assures us that in nature “the notions of right and wrong, justice
and injustice, have there no place” (Leviathan, chap. 13). In short, nature—
and her creator—have left human beings with no support for their political
endeavors. The Hobbesian solution to this dire situation is nothing less than
the conquest of nature, which according to Sacks is also laid out in “one of the
most beautiful passages of the book” (197).
More broadly, Hobbes’s analysis does seem to conform closely to the
meaning of the text. According to Sacks, Job “had grown up with his friends
in a comfortable world with its demands and its proscriptions. It all made
sense to him, and in the main, things turned out for the best” (138). Job’s
suffering comes as a sudden shock, without explanation or sense. To make
matters worse, Job was justly renowned for his piety. His punishment appears
as a divine judgment on his life, but “why should a man like Job feel the weight
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of guilt for a crime which he knows he did not commit?” (205). The tension
between justice in the city and cosmic justice appears so sharp that one might
reasonably conclude with Hobbes that there is no justice except conventionally, that is, where there is a human law supported by a common power.
One possible response to the Hobbesian interpretation is offered by the
interlocutors in the text itself, who claim that the connection between cosmic
justice and human justice is too remote for reason to perceive. One character,
Zophar, argues that human horizons are too narrow for humans to perceive
their place in the whole. Moreover, there are “a myriad of little separate worlds
each of which might suddenly come into contact with any other. No world
can perceive its effect on any other world till God brings them together—and
then it’s too late” (144, cf. 199). Of course, such a view suggests that logos
is of little use in perceiving the true nature of justice, much less in guiding
us toward it. Rather, we are thrown back on revelation, or as the character
Bildad argues, the political wisdom contained in the tradition (132, cf. 205).
Although Job cannot reconcile his piety and understanding of justice
with his punishment, he rejects the arguments of Zophar and Bildad. For
one thing, their accounts make light of the very real suffering of innocent
human beings like Job (161). Job cannot accept this indifference, bordering
on contempt, to political justice. Further, it is not true that the world discloses
itself to us only as a chaos that cannot be penetrated by our logos. “The world
is too orderly, too revelatory, to be a chaos; and yet, chaos is where it always
seems to find itself” (147). Hobbes’s analysis cannot be easily refuted because
it contains some truth, but as Sacks shows, not the whole truth.
Job insists on honoring justice, but without a comprehensive account of
the whole he cannot find its grounds, nor can he explain its efficacy in light
of the chaos and terror that appear to lie just beyond it (cf. 215). The last
human interlocutor, Elihu, attempts to harmonize these clashing elements.
He concedes à la Hobbes that the cosmos is indifferent to our fate and does
not support the political sphere (238). Political justice requires a prepolitical
foundation that is closed to logos. In other words, our human horizon, particularly our need to find lasting grounds for justice, points us to God. Elihu
means to save us from becoming less than human, but does so at the cost of
one of our most essential traits, “the need to see for oneself” (243). It is telling
that God’s reply “is not a telling but an asking.” Rather than devalue logos,
God’s speech from the whirlwind nurtures it.
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Still, if political life rests on wisdom embodied in and transmitted
through traditions and texts, it appears that those same traditions foreclose
the very inquiry which is essential to our humanity. The indomitable spirit of
inquiry, especially in the search for justice and wisdom, reminds us not only
of Job but, as Sacks reminds us, of Socrates. Indeed, one might argue that
Socrates surpasses Job in his efforts to find justice even at the cost of tradition
and piety. Though Job too is accused by his friends of impiety, he eventually
reconciles with God and recognizes the wisdom of the tradition (195, 205).
Socrates, in contrast, defies the tradition and even redefines piety in light of
his search for wisdom. By raising the problem of Socrates, Sacks brings us
finally to consider the tension between Athens and Jerusalem (150).
As we have already noted, the tension has been obscured by the tendency
of modern readers to reject the possibility of revelation and side with secularism. Such a tendency distorts not only our view of Jerusalem, but also of
Athens. Sacks’s project aims at restoring Jerusalem, but in the process he also
brings Athens into sharper relief. By showing that Jerusalem is a worthy, not
to say superior, alternative to Athens, Sacks suggests that Jerusalem presents
a more comprehensive account of the whole than does Athens. The book of
Job presents an astonishing range of opinions about man’s place in the whole,
and does so in the form of poetry. Not only does it combine philosophy and
poetry, but it presents the problem of Socrates as clearly as does Plato. In
Sacks’s commentary, Job is “the man of inquiry” whose desire to know transcends all earthly bounds such that he demands a hearing before God. As
part of that spirit of inquiry, Job presents a critique of tradition itself, which
tends to harden into dogma and hostility to reason (194).
In recognition of this critique, the Bible itself makes room for such
unique individuals as Job (and Socrates) to challenge the tradition and to
see its wisdom for themselves. Sacks points out that the book of Job presents
an alternative account to the creation story in Genesis and to man’s place in
the whole: “The God we meet in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, the
artisan God, has within himself the to be of the object. He shapes and molds
according to his plan, while the more feminine, nurturing God we meet in
the book of Job allows for the emergence of the to be which is in the thing
itself” (253, cf. 266–67). The book of Job reveals another aspect of God, who
invites us to observe the whole to appreciate not only our limitations but the
proper place for each thing (272–73).
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Book Review: The Second Birth
487
Tilo Schabert, The Second Birth: On the Political Beginnings of Human
Existence. Translated by Javier Ibáñez-Noé. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2015, 200 pp., $55 (cloth).
L i n d s ay G l o v e r
University of New Mexico
[email protected]
In The Second Birth: On the Political Beginnings of Existence, Tilo Schabert
formulates the first political question: “Toward what and for what should [a
human being] act, and in what way?” (33). It is the great question, he says,
and the question that existence asks of every human being. The effort to steer
and shape the movement of one’s life in response to this question is a political
beginning. For it contains the three essential elements of the political itself:
constitution, power, and government. Schabert traces the origin of politics to
the first breath of life, drawing from a miscellany of religious, political, and
philosophical thinkers including Pascal and Lao Tse, Aristotle and Ibn Khaldûn, Arendt and Anonymous Iamblichi, Strauss and Cicero, Voegelin and
Heraclitus. He locates the political in an orderly soul, in a crowded train station, and in a society whose structure of power is “nobler” and “more divine”
(35). Human beings are political by nature, Schabert contends. Their highest
purpose is to govern. In governing, they are bearers and makers of worlds.
The capacity to govern is fundamental to Schabert’s concept of the political. Such a capacity allows human beings to form what is just and beautiful
within themselves and without, in the external world. In Schabert’s theory,
there are four Gestalten, or given principles, that take hold of human beings
with their entrance into the world. These principles define the potential and
the limits of human power. They decide the forms that human existence can
and should have. The four Gestalten are divinity, thought, freedom, and law.
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The first, divinity, determines one’s power to create or destroy, as God in his
realm does. Human beings, according to Schabert, have a creative power
given them at birth. This power, he says, is evident “in every moment that
they think up a project and in every beginning they make toward something”
(116). They take what is merely thought and make it actual. Whatever the
good or evil they intend, they invent “an intended configuration,” “a wishedfor consummation,” or “a desired connection” (1). They “break and replace
the power of bodies” to give society its proper form, or they drain society
and damage its inhabitants (3). What human beings do create cannot have
the “constancy, duration, stillness [and] unity” of Creation itself, but it can be
firm and settled (58). It can persist. To make something persist, says Schabert,
is a divine matter. The work of creation itself is the “mimesis of God.”
Schabert’s second Gestalt is thought, which instills the power of a confluence of knowledge and purpose in the mind. He proposes that “power for
the recognition of meaning” is a human quality essential to the conduct of
life because it comprehends the totality of human existence in the political
moment (x). To study “the historical consciousness of human thought,” he
says, is to realize that the divine hand has shaped the rise and fall of civilizations through the ages. The “Gestalt-producing” power of God has defined
what is and what is possible (12). If the divine potential of human beings is
to be realized in the facts of their existence, they must know and understand
“what the right life is” (40). Out of the work of cognition, as meaning is woven
in thought, a work of power arises in the external world. Following a Platonic
line of reasoning, an ordering of society follows the pattern of the ordering
of one’s soul. Thus, the decision “to be in this or that existential condition” is
tied up with civilization itself (4). It has a political import. The individual who
organizes himself (herself) in keeping with what is prudent, just, and wise is
like a polis. In thought, as human beings find their bearings in a field of “passions, desires, resolutions, fantasies, volitions, yearnings, [and] reasonings,”
they learn to govern (3). As they become capable of humanity and conscious
of themselves, their existence opens itself to a capacity for beginnings. The
work of the soul points them to the work of laying a foundation for society.
For the sake of life and survival, thought becomes a civilizing power. When
thought is the subject of prejudice or delusion, it remains “a beginning, nothing more” (7). It must acquire “the character of a reality that founds a reality”
to change the world (43).
The third Gestalt that Schabert posits is freedom, the principle that
unsettles the other Gestalten by introducing an element of indeterminacy
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489
into them. Freedom “opens up every form of politics,” and so human beings
can choose the form of the political that suits them (117). They are free to
turn away from the power they have been given. They are free to deform
and destroy. They are free to overstep boundaries. Nevertheless, according to
Schabert, they are not free to choose their own nature, whatever their moral
inclinations. Human beings are distinct “in time, in space, [and] in the multitude of all other living beings and things,” but they are also inescapably
human (7). In modernity, Schabert observes, human beings have sought to
transcend their own mortality with intellect and reason. They have taken
their divinely given power and transformed it into a pathology. They have
tried to “create their world for themselves, hence a world totally subordinated
to them and created in their image” (47). They have followed their own way,
toward a false state of omnipotence that defies “the bonds of the cosmos” (48).
Having refused a better way, because they resented a power above themselves,
they have lost the highest freedom possible, “a freedom to be themselves” in
their humanity (3). They have chosen “a crushing servitude, in which they
become willingly dead in spirit” (52). They have become blind and cold.
The fourth Gestalt is law, or the principle of “reciprocal agreements
freely made by human beings with each other” (52). This Gestalt is the only
one of the four that human beings give to themselves. Using their pre-given
power, those who live and act together put laws in place to bind them to their
“togetherness” and protect them from the disquiet of passion and desire (82).
Laws, if they are good, says Schabert, serve as “load-bearing elements” (105).
They make possible “the order most conducive to the right conduct of life”
(102). Within this order, the freedom of the whole finds its proper scope and
consequence. Living in accord with the law, which molds their coexistence
“to the requirements of coexisting,” human beings are freed for their humanity with others (112). They are freed to do “their own free work” (122). Once
created, however, a space for freedom may disintegrate. The structures of
government may cease to function for the sake of freedom. For this reason,
human beings must care for their freedom. They must look after the power
that they place in a governing freedom “exactly as instructed”: giving power
and taking it away, choosing good leaders and placing obstructions in their
path, beginning good processes and interrupting them, putting good mechanisms in place and confusing their operation. By placing limits on what they
have created, human beings keep from losing themselves.
Is a society structured according to these Gestalten perfect? No. A perfect
society would have no need of them, according to Schabert. What is their
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purpose then? To bring to politics a moral end. For Schabert, the care of
human beings for themselves and for others is essential to the culmination
of a divinely guided life. What distinguishes a good human being from a
bad one is his (her) capacity to live a good life in a community. Schabert
draws a contrast between love formed in tyranny (Plato’s Gorgias) and love
formed in wisdom, what he calls eros philosophos (94). The human being with
the first kind of love is “friends neither with other human beings nor with a
god, because he cannot live in a community” (95). The one who has the second kind is “the communitarian human being, the creative friend,” the just
soul who is just to the world (94). In a shared world of bodies, the difference
between the two is a political one. Schabert proposes that only other-oriented
human beings can “[make] everything and everyone good,” as the order of
their souls is externalized. These human beings “[operate] among things for
the sake of these things, for their permanence, their co-existence and their
sociability.” They think and act “beyond the circle of their individuality” (35).
This is the second birth of the individual, a moral awakening into civilization.
It is this awakening that gives human beings power over time and death. It
gives them hope. A politics “brought to the point of beauty” resists decline
and despair (65). And it makes humanity complete. In the “fulfillment of life
itself,” as Plato, Nietzsche, Rousseau, John Adams, and the scholars of the
Huainanzi understood, human beings are truly happy (62).
Schabert seeks to counter the failings of modernity with his formulation
of the dignity and importance of the political. What is the value of such a formulation? He borrows the concept of a “second birth” from Hannah Arendt,
replacing impulse with necessity, and transforming a turn toward others into
a moral imperative. Schabert draws on “a wide field of things political” to construct a cosmology tracing the origin of politics to the Divine (127). (“God is
a politician,” he says [5].) However, he ignores tensions and contradictions in
the texts from which he takes his ideas. Schabert posits his theory as a kind of
“political science,” proven in such texts, as if the mere existence of these ideas
were sufficient to prove his claims (127). He uses quotations out of context and
interprets them narrowly to fit his arguments. They do not fit neatly into his
schema, which plots a post-Enlightenment course between faith and reason.
Schabert maintains that his project is “as broadly based and as comprehensive
as possible,” yet the rules of his Gestalten are exact, or “exactly as instructed”
(129, 122). The theological side of his thought makes him less a scientist than
a prophet. His assumptions raise questions about the legitimacy of his universal logic. What is divine? How is truth known? What is the “proper form” of
society (127)? How ought society to attend to the complexities of culture, race,
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491
gender, economy, and education? Schabert does not provide answers to these
questions. His theory is given as “a stimulus and a mode of political inspiration” (64). It is precisely in this mode of political inspiration, however, that the
value of his formulation lies. His notion of “human creativity directed at the
human polis” is compelling in this age of terror and doubt (127). It breathes
new life into Aristotle’s poiesis. It makes a logical space, echoing Wittgenstein,
for the power of the individual in a world of bodies. It revives a concern for
Strauss’s theological-political predicament. It affords an alternative to the
political theology of Carl Schmitt: a theological politics. It challenges the
modern polis to find a “better, ‘more beautiful’ way” (45).
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Book Review: Cartesian Psychophysics and the Whole Nature of Man
493
Richard F. Hassing, Cartesian Psychophysics and the Whole Nature of Man.
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015, 229 pp., $90 (cloth).
Pa m e l a K r au s
St. John’s College
[email protected]
From his earliest scientific treatise, it was clear that René Descartes intended
to bring mechanical physics to bear on the understanding of human beings
and the improvement of human life. The outline of the “nature and scope
of knowledge,” in the very early Rules for the Direction of the Native Intelligence (Lat. ingenium), was only a first attempt to correct that intelligence by
means of critical analysis, then to guide us to bona mens, a sound mind, and
ultimately to human wisdom. Although he modified over time the terms in
which he would pursue this task, the aim of improving life by increasing our
self-understanding, and, consequently, our choices and actions, remained
his goal. Yet that dimension of his thought has been obscured or ignored, in
part owing to his intricate style of writing, in part to his untimely death, and
in part to a preference for his provocative metaphysics on the part of many
readers. Happily, Richard Hassing, attuned to Descartes’s practical intention, has set out to elaborate Descartes’s moral and, by extension, political
thought, which is found in his last writing, The Passions of the Soul.
Hassing’s study is especially helpful in contrasting throughout Descartes’s alternative to the dominant views of his time, the Aristotelian account
and its medieval successors, especially the Thomistic adaptation. Additionally, because Descartes effectively demolished the traditional views of soul
and, thus, of the human being, Hassing shows that his work can be linked
fruitfully to subsequent developments in moral thought and political anthropology, in which the self rather than the soul and the historicity of human life
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predominate. He takes Descartes’s work to be pivotal in this change, important for all who are concerned with moral and political philosophy. His own
purpose is, then, also practical, insofar as he believes that Descartes thought
incisively about religious belief and political fanaticism, and that, in this
respect, we can learn from him about dangers that have continued to surface
over time and plague us today, which he refers to as “political pathologies.”
Hassing’s focus is not on Descartes’s physics entire, but on his physical
principles insofar as they explain the human being, the bodily occurrences
that shape life, perception, imagination, thought, and even judgment—
“psychophysics.” Descartes’s scientific approach—he claims to explain the
passions “only as a physicist”—delimits the mechanical conditions under
which we live and provides a framework for correcting the erroneous opinions that have arisen by habit and been reinforced by misguided thinkers.
Since the human being is, after all, not merely a machine, as Descartes admitted from very early on, the framework guides him in distinguishing those
parts of human life that are explicable by mechanics from those that are not,
and then in describing the “whole nature of man.” This includes what Hassing refers to as the arena of “natural and moral-political philosophy.”
The book is divided into eleven chapters, a conclusion, and an appendix.
The first four chapters set the context, Descartes’s earlier, partial accounts of
the human being as a mind-body composite: his first attempt to apply new
physical principles to the human body in the Treatise on Man; the versatility of speech, which defines humans over against animals, in part 5 of the
Discourse on Method; and the remnant of natural teleology that appears in
Meditation 6, the “teaching of nature.”
The core of the book recounts and analyzes the main teachings found in
the Passions of the Soul. Hassing’s study of the particulars is careful, detailed,
and learned. These qualities support him in addressing three ultimate questions about Descartes’s thought: (1) What is the role of physics in the account
of the passions? (2) What does Descartes mean by the phrase, “the whole
nature of man”? And (3) does the “scientific apparatus” allow Descartes to
account for the human being?
To the first question, Hassing answers that physics allows Descartes
to provide a new, that is, seventeenth-century, mechanical account of our
thoughts incorporated into a doctrine of soul. It replaces the long-standing
view that the human mind and its powers are naturally related to external
objects; that is to say, the assumption that objects possess the properties and
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495
qualities, such as red or sour or hardness, that we experience them to have.
The mechanical account identifies the known properties of bodies (shape,
size, and motion) in contrast to what appears to the mind, that is, our various “thoughts,” a term used very widely in Descartes to include everything
of which we are aware. It dismisses the notion that the mind is ordered to
nature, to “forms,” whether sensible or intelligible, in things. Soul is not the
activity of the living, sentient, cognitive being, involved in every aspect of life,
but rather is a center of knowledge and experience, with its “principal seat”
in the small pineal gland. Motions in this gland trigger associated thoughts
in the soul, and from that gland the soul radiates through the body. This
arrangement unmasks our perceptions, images, and feelings as epiphenomena; outfitted properly with accurate knowledge about them, we can correct
our understanding of the world and of ourselves, and can navigate our experiences to good effect by skillful attention to them.
Second, Hassing considers the meaning of the phrase, “the whole nature
of man.” He distinguishes three sorts of dualism in Cartesian thought. First
is that soul and body are distinct substances, the metaphysical dualism that
Descartes famously argues for in the sixth Meditation. Second is “epistemological dualism,” unearthed also in the sixth Meditation. The mind’s ability
to act alone and know clearly and distinctly coexists with a kind of “knowing” that is connected to nature through undeniable feelings such as hunger
and thirst. To these Hassing adds a third, what he calls “anthropological
dualism,” which is properly found in the Passions of the Soul. The “whole
nature” is a dualism between “our general biological nature,” which serves
the good of the body, and “our particular, historical being transcending biology.” The latter is grounded in a sense of oneself that does not seem to derive
from mechanical nature or from nature’s teaching, cannot be explained by
either, and has value independent of them. Hassing’s discussion of esteem
and scorn, along with the other “primitive” passions (Passions, art. 149),
highlights the locus of those imagined goods that may cause us to compromise or harm bodily life, such as the motives for which we would fight to
the death. Descartes’s account is meant to correct misleading motives, with
important ramifications for religion and politics. The one thing of highest
value, the culminating moment, is found in Descartes’s virtue of generosity,
which “makes a man esteem himself as highly as he can legitimately esteem
himself” (Passions, art. 153). The virtue makes us able to be true masters of
our free volitions over against the constant bombardment of external causes.
It has itself a double character: that of self-sufficiency and that of resolving
always to use volitions well. Hassing then can show Descartes’s remedy for
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certain recurring “pathologies” or fanaticisms, especially those involving
thumos, which can be “redirected from warlike self-assertion and collective
self-sacrifice to the defense of one’s own self-sufficient autonomy.”
Finally, in highlighting the limits of Descartes’s achievement, which
Hassing has stressed throughout, he marks two of its deficiencies. First, Descartes’s discussion of esteem and scorn, what we perceive as great and small,
provides no basis other than his own opinion about what is truly greatest.
There is no external standard according to which we can measure it. Second,
despite the fact that it has a “certain beauty,” the account of generosity is not
clear and distinct, and because it is not, we are free to take it or leave it.
To say this, however, is just to say that there is no scientifically demonstrable or secure basis for evaluative judgments, including moral and political
judgments. But that is an old thought, not particular to Descartes. What is
particular to Descartes is the attempt to include both the relevant physical
causes and undeniable experience, which cannot be explained by those physical causes, in his account of the human being. So it is for Descartes, as it will
be for others following, such as Hume and Locke, that what passed heretofore
for moral and political thought, the bases of which were also not demonstrably knowable, is accounted for now in terms of “experience” correctly
understood and directed by means of a general critique of human nature and
knowledge. Even the free will, however undeniably experienced, is not and
cannot be clear and distinct. And it will be for Kant to attempt to provide a
foundation other than physics or mere personal experience for morality.
Hassing makes no attempt in this volume to relate the three dualities to
one another, or to point out where they intersect, though that would be very
welcome, especially if the third duality is that of the whole nature of man. In
the Passions of the Soul, the ego cogito is unmentioned although the knowledge of clear and distinct ideas is implicitly there among the volitions of the
soul of the composite. That would seem to relegate clear and distinct knowledge to a departmental function of the human soul. And perhaps it would
relegate the ego cogito of Meditations 2 and 6 to a functional construct, a
name for one of the ways that mind’s attentive power can self-compartmentalize. Had he lived, Descartes may have moved to tackle the metaphysical
issues his teachings in the Passions raise. As it is, he seems to have provided,
instead, a functional account of the human soul as the only comprehensive
one available to us.
Book Review: Modernity and Its Discontents
497
Steven B. Smith, Modernity and Its Discontents: Making and Unmaking the
Bourgeois from Machiavelli to Bellow. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2016, 416 pp., $35.52.
H a i g Pata pa n
Griffith University
[email protected]
“Modernity is a problem” is the provocative starting point of Smith’s Modernity
and Its Discontents (ix). Though acknowledging that modernity means many
things, Smith’s point of departure is of “modernity as the site of a unique type
of human being, one entirely unknown to the ancient and medieval worlds
that I want to call the bourgeois” (ix). This focus seems to be based on the fact
that the bourgeois way of life has been fully identified with America, and “our
political regime—the regime dedicated to the pursuit of happiness—is beset
with dissatisfaction” (x). The problem of modernity is therefore not only a
matter of theoretical reflection but of some political urgency.
Modernity and Its Discontents is divided into four parts, with Part One,
“Introduction,” and Part Four, a brief “Conclusion,” bookending the bulk
of the book, which consists of a series of essays collected under Part Two,
“Modernity,” and Part Three, “Our Discontents.” “Modernity” consists of
eight chapters on significant themes in the works of Machiavelli, Descartes,
Hobbes, Spinoza, Benjamin Franklin, Kant, and Hegel. These chapters seek
to elucidate the development of the idea of progress as “the promise of an
unprecedented form of liberation” (xi). This modernity, or indeed “modernities” as Smith notes, resulted in its doppelgänger, or “Counter-Enlightenment”
(xii). Part Three, ‘“Our Discontents,” explores this antimodernity with eight
chapters on Rousseau, Tocqueville, Flaubert, the “apocalyptic imagination”
(Nietzsche, Sorel, Schmitt), Isaiah Berlin, Leo Strauss, Lampedusa, and Saul
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Bellow. As each chapter is to some extent self-contained and can be read
independently, the book for some will be seen as a collection of elegant and
thoughtful essays that engage deeply with a thinker or a theme. The book’s
two epigraphs seem to anticipate such an approach. As such these essays are a
testament to the impressive breadth and erudition of Smith’s scholarship that
felicitously ranges across politics, philosophy, religion, and literature.
Yet these essays, taken together, are meant to serve a larger purpose,
Smith’s attempt to understand “modernity” and its “discontents” (the title
echoing Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents: xiii). “The thesis that I
develop in this book,” Smith tells us, “is that modernity has created within
itself a rhetoric of anti-modernity that has taken philosophical, literary, and
political forms. How did the idea of the bourgeois, once considered virtually synonymous with the free and responsible individual, become associated
with a kind of low-minded materialism, moral cowardice, and philistinism?
It is this dialectic that I hope to explore” (xi). The great merit of the book is
the extent to which the structure Smith adopts, a detailed and wide-ranging
engagement with the various theoretical founders of modernity as well as its
most telling critics, allows the reader to confront the question of modernity
and its discontents. But this structure and approach also limit Smith’s own
reflections and observations on these major themes to a Preface (ix–xiv),
Introduction, “Modernity in Question” (3–26), and a Conclusion, “Modernity and Its Doubles” (347–52). The book therefore is limited in the extent
to which we gain an insight into Smith’s unmediated and comprehensive
insights on the question or problem of modernity. From the brief conclusion, we learn that what is generally considered the crisis of the West is for
Smith “the very character of modernity as the site of manifold discontents”
(348). These discontents have taken two broad forms. The first is the “political Left” (Kantian, Hegelian, Marxist) that endorses the Enlightenment but
seeks better institutions to secure its ends (348). The second is the “CounterEnlightenment” that has a radical, apocalyptic form that wants to overthrow
it (de Maistre, Nietzsche, Sorel, Heidegger), a postmodernism that is in certain respects the “Enlightenment on steroids” (349), and a moderate form
that seeks to sustain and correct it (Tocqueville, Berlin, and Strauss, as well
as Oakeshott and Aron). Smith favors the Counter-Enlightenment in its
moderate form, noting that the real problem lies in “progressivism” as a kind
of “ersatz religious faith” and its origins in modern science and positivism
(Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes) (350). It is the scepticism regarding progressivism, according to Smith, that has posed questions about the Enlightenment.
Living with the competing strands of the Enlightenment and its counter “has
Book Review: Modernity and Its Discontents
499
made the emancipatory power of reason and science increasingly illusory.”
Yet Smith’s concluding words seem to discern benefits to this “double” aspect
of modernity: “We remain perpetually gnawed at by our manifold discontents—and that is a good thing” (352).
To see the theoretical bases for these concluding observations we need to
turn to the beginning of the book. Yet the brevity of treatment in the Preface
and the Introduction means Smith’s stimulating insights into the character
of modernity remain ambiguous or insufficiently explored. Consider, for
example, two major questions prompted by the title of the book: What does
Smith understand by modernity? What are its discontents?
Smith is aware of the complex nature of “modernity,” which “came to
be associated with the sovereign individual as the unique locus of moral
responsibility, the separation of state and civil society as distinct realms of
authority, the secularization of society or at least the lessening of the public
role of religion, the elevation of science and scientific forms of rationality as
the standard for knowledge, and a political regime based on the recognition
of rights as the sole basis of its legitimacy” (ix). Later, he observes, “Modernity
considered here is hardly all of a piece. It might be more accurate to speak of
modernities. It includes everything from liberal modernity that values tolerance, commerce, self-discovery to more ambitious plans for large scale social
engineering, achieving of rationalist perfectionism, and the transformation
of the nation-state into a world of federation or even a world state” (xi). In
the introductory chapter he goes on to outline the various ways modernity
has been understood, from scientific and philosophical innovations, wars of
religion, and revolutions that entrenched equality and rights of man to artistic changes (4). This capacious or comprehensive definition of modernity,
which he frequently also calls “Enlightenment,” is understandable given the
breadth of thinkers examined and ideas explored in the book. At the same
time, Smith seems unwilling to leave modernity and the Enlightenment at
this level of generality. “Is the idea of modernity a coherent one?” (5) is the
compelling question he poses. Yet the answer he provides proves to be ambiguous. For example, Smith makes a persuasive case that an important aspect of
modernity is the idea of a “permanent revolution” or the idea of “progress” or
“progressivism” (6–11). At the same time, however, he argues that modernity
is above all characterized by the bourgeois, a new type of human being and a
form of civilization that is criticized by the “Counter-Enlightenment” for its
focus on science and commerce at the expense of culture (15–17). What is at
the heart of modernity therefore remains elusive. Is there a constitutive core
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to modernity that shapes and defines its peripheral aspects? Or is modernity constituted by modernities, related but distinct elements or strands that
mostly reinforce but sometimes counter each other?
These questions are especially important for understanding Smith’s diagnosis of modernity’s “discontents” and more specifically his thesis, borrowing
from Horkheimer and Adorno, that there is a “dialectic of Enlightenment”
where “the critical spirit that had once been turned against the past would
be turned against modernity itself, creating its own dissatisfaction with the
present” (13). Because every thesis has its antithesis, “every Enlightenment
produces its Counter-Enlightenment” (14). The Counter-Enlightenment did
not seek to restore a world, “but to create a more accelerated form of the new”
(14). Why the dialectic of the Enlightenment is not sublated, but instead accelerates and therefore exacerbates modernity, remains unclear in this account.
Indeed, this insight into modernity seems to contend with Smith’s other view
of modernity as constituted by its “double” (20–23). Here he argues that the
Enlightenment and its Counter-Enlightenment “are not so much antagonists
as copartners in the modern project” (20). This view is presumably intended
to explain the different strands in modernity, distinguishing between the
nihilistic and bourgeois self-hating Counter-Enlightenment that embraces
fascism and reactionary modernism from those strands informed above all
by Tocqueville (and Strauss) which initiate a conversation with modernity
to defend it (21–22). Yet on what basis one should choose one over the other
remains unclear. What is evident, however, is that Modernity and Its Discontents is in the spirit of Tocqueville, seeking to discern important and fruitful
areas of continuity and discontinuity between modernity and its doubles
through engagement and conversation (23). In this task and ambition it succeeds admirably.
Book Review: The Form of Politics
501
John von Heyking, The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016, 233 pp., $32.95.
Love with Wings
N at h a n P i n ko s k i
St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford
[email protected]
Partly a work of exegetical scholarship and partly a work of philosophical
reflection, The Form of Politics is an insightful treatise emerging from wonder over what Aristotle calls sunaisthesis, the joint perception of the good
between persons. It is this sunaisthetic moment between persons that forges
the most complete form of friendship, virtue friendship, which in turn shapes
politics. The puzzle for exegetical scholarship, and philosophical reflection, is
exactly how virtue friendship is supposed to relate to politics. Aristotle says
that friendship resides in political communities, communities that come
together for the sake of what is just and advantageous (EN 1159b25–1160a30).
Yet political friendship or civic friendship is not the same as virtue friendship,
although it involves virtue friendship (Politics 1261a10–1262a25). Focusing
on the nature of the common good helps make political friendship clearer. In
a political community, I share and pursue the good of others at the same time
as I pursue my own good. For example, a farmer who joins a militia to defend
his land may still be assigned to protect his own land, but he acts as part of a
plan that aims to protect everyone’s farms.1 All those who share in this plan
exhibit the “like-mindedness” (homonoia) that comes with friendship.
Michael Pakaluk, Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 271–72.
1
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John von Heyking points out that this does not solve the puzzle. Accounts
of the common good state that it involves like-mindedness and friendship,
but they do not state what the common good looks like. It is therefore not
clear what political friendship is. For von Heyking, the question to ask is:
what is the version of sunaisthetic friendship, in politics, which would constitute political friendship?
The standard answer to this question emphasizes that the characteristic
activity of political friendship is deliberation over what is just and advantageous to the community as a whole. Von Heyking argues that as deliberation
presupposes agreement about the ends, one should be asking what activity
the agreement about the ends presupposes. His answer is festivity: “the political or civic version of sunaisthetic friendship, and the clearest expression of
the common good” (38). Festivity shows the essential unity of the regime,
and provides the form and standard of political friendship.
By elevating the practice of festivity to the form of politics, above reasoned deliberation about the just and advantageous, von Heyking offers
a kind of peace settlement to the quarrel between poetry and philosophy.
From the point of view of Plato and Aristotle, that is to say, philosophy, von
Heyking defends these verses from the start of Odyssey IX—verses that praise
festivity and poetry:
There’s nothing better
Than when deep joy holds sway throughout the realm
And banqueters up and down the palace sit in ranks,
Enthralled to hear the bard, and before them all, the tables
Heaped with bread and meats, and drawing wine from a mixing-bowl
The steward makes his rounds and keeps the winecups flowing.
This, to my mind, is the best that life can offer. (13)
Von Heyking hopes to provide poetry’s defense “without meter” (Republic
607d), softening Socrates’s harsh moral judgment of poetry in Plato’s Republic.
Von Heyking’s defense “without meter” starts with Aristotle, by connecting Politics VII and VIII, Aristotle’s discussion of the good regime, to the
Poetics. For von Heyking, Aristotle’s Poetics endorses festivity and poetry as
beneficial to political and human life, assisting in the completion of political
and virtue friendship. Poetry blends generality and specificity, teaching practical wisdom through mimesis: particular representations that communicate
universals. Von Heyking develops a theme in line with other neo-Aristotelians (notably Alasdair MacIntyre) that humans are essentially story-telling
animals. In moments of sunaisthesis, our stories are transformed by the
Book Review: The Form of Politics
503
stories of our friends. Friends become part of the story of our own life. We
then carry this shared storytelling into political life, where it brings unity and
collective civic action, shaping the good regime. Yet Aristotle never dissolves
the individual character of the person into collective action: sunaisthesis after
all is about a shared perception between persons, which leads us to love the
individual character (ethos) of the other person. Von Heyking sees here the
limits of philosophy, for the otherness of the other person, his unique character, eludes the grasp of reason.
For von Heyking, the Platonic dialogues are better suited to this problem (87), so the second half of his book examines Lysis and the Laws. These
dialogues provide an image of the practice of sunaisthesis. Von Heyking
argues that the image of friendship in Lysis refutes the well-known charge
of Gregory Vlastos that Plato’s view of love is about loving a metaphysical
universal, not the uniqueness of an individual. Plato, von Heyking argues,
presents an image of the practice of sunaisthesis that honors individuality
through the daimonic symbolism of Hermes. Hermes is the spiritual force
that creates human friendships, by opening human beings up to the gift of
otherness. Praised throughout Greek festivals, poetry, and hymns for this
capacity, Hermes reminds that a friend cannot be subsumed under a metaphysical universal of friendship, but that a friend is a mysterious image of the
divine, a revelation that the divine interacts with human beings.
The Laws develops this theme in a political setting, where music, myths,
choruses, dances, and “preludes” (see Laws 722d–e) create the like-mindedness among the hypothetical citizens of Magnesia. Moreover, the dramatic
action draws attention to how the characters of the dialogue draw together
in friendship. Eventually they grasp an insight of a daimonic quality: that the
divine plays a role in human life.
There is undoubtedly a liturgical quality to von Heyking’s understanding
of festivity; the Thomist Josef Pieper influences his understanding of festivity
(13). Von Heyking’s understanding of civic celebrations discloses a transcendent, quasi-religious practice. Not wishing to make them the same as
religious practice, von Heyking tells us that Christian liturgical services are
“not political” (194). Regrettably, he never elaborates on what the difference
between the Magnesian civic religion and the Christian civic religion would
be. Von Heyking thinks that the festivity akin to the Magnesian regime can
exist in modern times, but a more radical thesis would be that Christianity
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changes the classical scope of politics, so that the project of civic unity is
necessarily and explicitly incomplete, until modernity resets it.2
As the practice of friendship transcends our capacity to understand it
theoretically (128), it is fitting for von Heyking to conclude his book with an
account of the practice of festivity that shows what the common good looks
like. Von Heyking selects the Calgary Stampede, an annual summer festival
that takes place in the city of Calgary, Alberta. The Stampede, a festival blending rodeo, agricultural exhibition, and midway, gives the city of Calgary great
renown throughout North America, so that Calgary’s fame easily surpasses
the similar-sized provincial capital of Alberta, Edmonton.
Von Heyking describes the Stampede because he thinks it highlights the
goods of tolerance and civic friendship. This raises the issue of whether von
Heyking’s defense of poetry “without meter” actually succeeds in softening
philosophy’s harsh moral judgment of poetry exhibited in Plato’s Republic.
For von Heyking does not think all political festivals are praiseworthy; he
rejects the festivals of the French Revolution and Nuremburg rallies because
they lack justice (194–95).
The Stampede also lacks justice. To put it mildly, no participant in the
Calgary Stampede would ever mistake it for a temperance movement, and
it takes no wild act of the imagination to consider how intemperate acts
threaten justice. Von Heyking concedes that there are aspects of the festival
that nourish injustice (202); yet he defends the festival on account of other
just and advantageous aspects, such as multicultural tolerance. For example,
it fosters participation from a variety of cultures that never experienced
rodeos, such as immigrant Muslims. They wear cowboy hats over their hijabs
(203), and the city of Calgary sets up prayer tents so they can still participate
in the festival during Ramadan (201). By assessing the festival so plainly in
terms of what is just and advantageous, it is clear von Heyking considers the
merits of the Stampede from the moral judgment seat of philosophy. He reasons about the festival’s merits as a spectator, placing himself and his readers
at a critical distance from the festival. This critical distance is not unlike that
of an Edmontonian who, one summer, asks his friends if it is worth descending from Edmonton to Calgary in order to see the festival. How would this
Edmontonian reason about it?
2
See Pierre Manent, Metamorphoses of the City: On the Western Dynamic, trans. Marc Lepain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 4–9.
Book Review: The Form of Politics
505
An enlightened Edmontonian might think that the best life is pursued by
a decision not to participate in the festival, and instead to converse about the
problem of what justice is in the company of friends. This Edmontonian sees
the festival as incomplete in terms of the best life. He grants that in attending
the festival he could share in some just activities and lead a good life, but
he recognizes its defects. So it is by discussing justice with friends that one
takes seriously the problem of living a good life.3 This discussion draws the
Edmontonian to the best life. From this perspective, the good regime should
be praised not for allowing its citizens the leisure to participate in festivals,
but because its promotion of leisure encourages its citizens to pursue the
nightly conversations conducive to the best life.
This path of reasoning is emboldened by von Heyking’s portrayal of the
festival in terms of what is just and advantageous. He judges the festival from
the perspective of philosophy, so he must be prepared to meet a challenge
from the perspective of philosophy as to the ultimate worth of the festival.
However, von Heyking’s portrayal of the festival has the character of setting
up a screen around the city. When he removes the screen it is to hint at divine
transcendence, not philosophy.4 He does not tell us how festivity takes us to
philosophy, for festivity cannot be the best life. However he would attend
to that notable gap in his book, von Heyking would likely argue that the
philosophic path presupposes an understanding of what the festival is. The
Edmontonian may be doubtful of all the advantages of the Calgary Stampede,
but he at least takes the festival seriously. His counterpart is the smug and
cynical Laurentinian who would not be caught within five hundred miles of
the Calgary Stampede, and so fails to understand political life.
Von Heyking’s philosophical goal is to draw from the ancients to teach
his reader a way to think about friendship and politics in modernity that does
not descend into smugness and cynicism. Von Heyking offers a rich meditation on friendship’s role throughout life past and present, with reference
to a variety of political and literary figures. Winston Churchill, Abraham
Lincoln, Gail Caldwell, Geddy Lee, Thomas Mann, and C. S. Lewis all feature. Von Heyking’s treatment of the friendships of the duke of Marlborough
Stephen Salkever, “Taking Friendship Seriously,” in Friendship and Politics: Essays in Political
Thought, ed. John von Heyking and Richard Avramenko (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2008), 64.
3
4
See Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 28.
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is a magnificent demonstration of why Leo Strauss urged Churchill’s Life of
Marlborough to be “required reading for every political scientist.”5
Ultimately, Von Heyking’s quarrel between the ancients and the moderns is not a matter of reason, but a matter of love. The Romantic Movement’s
exaltation of bodily erotic love, captured in Lord Byron’s assertion that
friendship is love without wings, is his real modern adversary. Von Heyking
is surely right that we now see friendship as “diluted eros” (93)—only consider one of the latest neologisms, “bromance,” to spot the extent of the decay.
It would do us well to reflect on how sunaisthesis evinces wonder, deepening
our own moral lives and our own political regime. Von Heyking is well aware
of Tocqueville’s critique of democracy (128–30); standing against Byron with
Aristotle and Plato would go some way toward combating democracy’s corrosion of the spirit of association that exacerbates the drift toward loneliness.
Only friendship, rightly understood, can save us now. The Form of Politics is
well summarized by an epithet Evelyn Waugh attached to a man who never
made an enemy nor lost a friend: “Oh dear friendship, what a gift of God it
is. Speak no ill of it.”6
Leo Strauss, “Churchill’s Greatness,” Weekly Standard, Jan. 4, 2000, http://www.weeklystandard.
com/churchills-greatness/article/11653.
5
Evelyn Waugh, The Life of Right Reverend Ronald Knox (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 115. The
author of the epithet is Fr. Bede Jarrett, OP.
6
Book Review: Sophistry and Political Philosophy
507
Robert C. Bartlett, Sophistry and Political Philosophy: Protagoras’ Challenge
to Socrates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016, 224 pp., $40 (cloth).
L i n da R . R a b i e h
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
[email protected]
Robert C. Bartlett’s Sophistry and Political Philosophy: Protagoras’ Challenge
to Socrates is a singular achievement. It combines meticulous textual analysis, deep scholarship, and unflagging attention to the most serious questions
with writing that is both lively and lucid. Bartlett expertly guides the reader
through the twists and turns of Plato’s Protagoras and Theaetetus in order to
clarify the debate between sophistry and Socratic political philosophy. He
argues persuasively that this debate remains alive and vital; contemporary
relativism, the view that reason lacks any solid foundation, is the legacy of
the sophistry that was born in ancient Greece, and the truth of its claims
would render philosophy an exercise in futility (3, 164, 173). Nothing less
than the very possibility of education in the full sense of the word, the possibility of learning something true about moral and political questions, or
even about anything at all, is at stake.
Bartlett tackles the Protagoras and the Theaetetus because Protagoras,
the greatest sophist of antiquity, is a central figure in both dialogues. Socrates
examines his moral/political doctrine in the former, and his theoretical
doctrine in the latter. This short review cannot do justice to Bartlett’s many
excellent observations and compelling interpretations, including his instructive discussions of other dialogues and authors (e.g., 88–89, 124–26), trenchant
observations about contemporary questions (e.g., 185), and vivid accounts of
Socrates’s own masterful rhetoric, subtlety, and humor (e.g., 30, 42, 71, 86–87,
97). It will aim instead to outline the book’s seminal contribution: bringing
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into sharp relief the character of sophistry and thereby of Socratic political
philosophy. In examining these dialogues, Bartlett uncovers the opinions at
the heart of sophistry and thereby lays the foundation for understanding the
distinctiveness and even the superiority of Socratic political philosophy.
Bartlett argues that Socrates’s examination of Protagoras in the Protagoras has two distinct objectives (72, 89, 213–14). Socrates questions Protagoras
initially for the sake of his young companion Hippocrates, who wishes to see
and perhaps study with Protagoras, but also for his own purposes. Through
an analysis of Protagoras’s famous long speech and Socrates’s subsequent
cross-examination of Protagoras, Bartlett first shows how Socrates exposes
Protagoras’s defective prudence. Socrates does so by bringing out what Protagoras claims to teach his students, namely, that while belief in the gods
and the political virtue they demand is good for political communities, those
beliefs are neither true nor is there any need to practice the civic virtues if
one can cleverly disguise one’s failure to do so (38–39, 97–98). Noting some
evident similarities between Protagoras and Socrates (115–16, 126), Bartlett
reveals the deeper difference: Protagoras’s casual disdain for political virtue (208–9). But that disdain has practical consequences for Protagoras.
As Bartlett deftly shows, Protagoras’s open dismissal of civic virtue leaves
him vulnerable to Socrates’s manipulation of Protagoras’s argument so that
it openly contends that piety is unjust (46) and that committing injustice is
moderate (49). Bartlett thus shows how easily Socrates undermines Protagoras’s claim to possess (and thereby to be able to teach) the art of speaking
cleverly with a view to one’s own safety (210–11) and that Protagoras’s vulnerability arises from his failure to treat questions of ordinary piety and justice
with any seriousness (103).
Socrates next turns from investigating Protagoras’s teaching to examining the man himself. Here Bartlett brings out the defective understanding
that underlies Protagoras’s contempt for political virtue, linking it to what is
revealed to be Protagoras’s confusion about courage (74). Protagoras’s initial
account of courage appears to be compatible with his view, stated earlier, that
the only sensible guiding principle is what is good or advantageous for oneself
(81, 97). But after an interlude in which Socrates teases out Protagoras’s hedonism (82, 88), Protagoras is no longer willing to concede the implication of
his initial argument about courage: in facing terrible things, the courageous
do only what is most pleasant. Protagoras, then, is not only imprudent; he
does not know his own mind (99, 103–4). His evident admiration for courage
conflicts with his view that the good is the pleasant. He cannot treat courage
Book Review: Sophistry and Political Philosophy
509
as merely the pursuit of the pleasant and thus refuses to reduce courage to
the end that he has openly argued is the only sensible end for human beings
(97–98, 104). As much as Protagoras thinks one’s own good, or one’s own
pleasure, is the only sensible standard, when the implication of this claim
becomes clear to him, “he recoils from it” (105). Bartlett argues that Protagoras remains attached to something like noble courage and the hopes that
accompany its exercise at least in part because of the character of the world
as Protagoras describes it in his initial long speech (38–39). After all, the
knowledge described in that speech is limited in what it can provide human
beings, leaving open the hope that noble courage is somehow rewarded, perhaps even by divine beings (65, 105). Protagoras’s contempt for civic virtue,
one of whose manifestations is the display of noble courage, has prevented
him, Bartlett shows, from seeing the hold it continues to have over him and
thereby the power of its claim to explain the soul (cf. 222).
The Protagoras of the Theaetetus, conjured up by Socrates, is a somewhat
different Protagoras (119, 231n10). We encounter here, says Bartlett, “a much
more impressive thinker” with a radical theoretical doctrine that Socrates
insists on laying out. Socrates, in conversation with Theaetetus, a young,
promising mathematician, introduces the late Protagoras’s famous claim that
“man is the measure” to flesh out Theaetetus’s own tentative definition of
knowledge as “nothing other than” perception. While the ostensible subject
of the dialogue is “What is knowledge?” Bartlett shows that the deeper issue
at stake is whether knowledge is possible (122). Bartlett’s discussion carefully
distinguishes among the various accounts of knowledge that Socrates brings
forth—that knowledge is perception, that man is the measure, and that all is
in motion or flux—and he shows the ways in which they are positions that do
not necessarily imply or depend on one another (135–36, 143). Bartlett pays
special attention to the difficulties attending the thesis that all is in motion
and what it means to hypothesize that there is no stable or knowable being
but that whatever “is” is in constant motion and thus is never actually an “is”
(153–54, 173). Among its many difficulties, the thesis about motion is necessarily hypothetical (143, 151) and at odds with our experience of the world
(205–6). Yet, as Bartlett shows, the motion thesis is essential to understanding the radicalized version of Protagoras’s claim that man is the measure:
it is precisely because he accepts that all is in motion that Protagoras can
maintain that each man is the measure. Hence the Protagoras of the Theaetetus embraces a full-blown relativism, meaning that all things, including
and especially morality, piety, and even the good, have no stability or truth
beyond one’s private and momentary experience of them (176–77). Bartlett’s
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careful analysis of the implications of this thesis leads him to raise this pressing question: why would Protagoras hold a doctrine that, at least in Socrates’s
account of it, leads him to the position where one can ultimately say nothing
about knowledge at all (202–3)? For the full elaboration of Protagoras’s theoretical doctrine suggests that knowledge, understood as the human capacity
to grasp anything truly, is impossible.
Bartlett argues that Protagoras’s position is rooted in an awareness of
the mysteriousness at the heart of any attempt to explain how or why the
world appears to us as it does (154, 170–71, 220), and the challenge that this
poses to assessing or addressing the claims of those, including prophets, who
claim to speak with gods (162–63, 202–3). By embracing the argument that
everything is subjective, Protagoras relieves himself of the burden of demonstrating the falsity of the claim that there exists a “knowledge” that is beyond
the experiences of others (162–64). If there is no way to access the experiences of another, much less to assess their truth, Protagoras’s doctrine at least
allows that if they cannot be refuted, they also cannot be confirmed (203).
The extremity of Protagoras’s doctrine, especially what Bartlett argues is his
willingness to treat the good as relative (171, 197–98, 202), thus appears to be
a response to a theoretical problem. The difficulty is that in trying to respond
to an argument the truth of which Protagoras is unable to refute, Protagoras
gives up on knowledge altogether, a position, Bartlett notes, whose “truth”
undermines Socrates’s very way of life and thus explains why Socrates treats
it with the utmost seriousness (173, 224).
What, then, is the connection between Protagoras’s radicalism that
Socrates lays out in the Theaetetus and his moral/political confusion that
Socrates exposes in the Protagoras? Bartlett shows how in the latter dialogue
Socrates outshines and out-argues Protagoras, largely because his interlocutor fails to take virtues such as piety and justice seriously, thereby failing to
recognize and understand the full panoply of human concerns, including
love and mortality (214–15). The most compelling evidence of this failure is
Protagoras’s confusion over courage and especially his own apparent attraction to its noble and beautiful examples. But the Protagoras of the Theaetetus,
whose doctrine is rooted in an awareness of the impossibility of refuting all
possible claims, would not seem to be as disturbed as he turns out to be in
the Protagoras when Socrates exposes the confusion in his arguments (96,
99). Bartlett acknowledges this tension between the dialogues and argues
that in the Theaetetus, Plato improves upon the historical Protagoras, at least
in part to explain Socrates’s own concerns (222; cf. 191). By bringing out the
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theoretical roots of Protagoras’s doctrine in the Theaetetus, Socrates points to
his profound concern with the challenge that this doctrine poses to his way
of life and to his own grounds for addressing that challenge. For, as Bartlett
shows, Socrates adumbrates a tantalizing alternative: he somehow discovered
a stable enough human perspective to maintain consistently that there is
a knowledge available that directs human beings to the truly good things
(195–97, 217–18, 223). Indeed, throughout the discussion of the Theaetetus,
Bartlett alerts his readers to textual indications of an account of knowledge
that is rooted in perception, making man qua man a measure, without needing to resort to the argument that all is flux (161, 221–22). Bartlett guides his
reader towards this possibility by exploring the results of Socrates’s peculiar
practice of dialectics, which requires, among other things, taking seriously
ordinary opinions about the virtues rather than assuming their conventionalism, being keenly alive to the profound human concern for love and beauty,
and possessing in his own soul a remarkable degree of toughness or steadiness that allows him to pursue these questions wherever they lead (89, 105,
215–17). This guidance, at least for this reviewer, is the most instructive part
of a deeply rewarding book.
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Hillel Halkin, After One Hundred and Twenty: Reflecting on Death, Mourning, and the Afterlife in the Jewish Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2016, 232 pp. $27.95 (cloth).
The Longing That Dares Not Speak Its Name
R ich a r d S . Ru der m a n
University of North Texas
[email protected]
Near the end of his remarkably wide-ranging, humane, and beautifully
written book, Hillel Halkin turns away from the complex and variegated
traditional Jewish view of death, mourning, and the afterlife to the views of
all but the most Orthodox of contemporary Jews. In a word: not my concern.
Despite having access to perhaps the most thoroughly worked-out understanding of the afterlife, most especially in its relation to our moral worth
as earned in this world, Halkin’s thoughtful and extremely representative
contemporary Jews show no interest in this “ray of hope” (207). The afterlife,
they tell him, plays “no role in [their] religion” (202). The whole question of
eternity and its relation to our mortality, that is, “didn’t much matter to anyone” Halkin interviewed. Without evincing the slightest grandstanding or
morbidity or thoughtless deference to what his tradition has told him, however, Halkin suggests it does matter to him—and, I suspect, will to many of
his readers. The unstated question that, to no small extent, lies at the bottom
of his book, then, is this: Have contemporary, enlightened Jews simply shed
a primitive belief that they have outgrown (like a butterfly emerging from its
pupa) or have they somehow been distracted from confronting death and its
full meaning?
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The stated intention of Halkin’s book is to examine the evolution of the
Jewish view of death, from its biblical origins as something that is “for all
intents and purposes final” to the various (sometimes tension-laden) aspects
of death’s “superstructure,” namely, the afterlife—or various kinds of possible afterlives—that Jews and non-Jews might hope or fear to experience
(202). (Halkin does not abide by the Orthodox view that every aspect of the
afterlife discovered in postbiblical, chiefly Talmudic, sources was present in
the form of “hints” and implications of the original biblical text. As do so
many others, he places a great burden on the fact that there is no explicit
mention of an afterlife in the Bible until the book of Daniel.) Rather than
simply recount, more or less chronologically, the additions and accretions
(and even revisions) to the initial biblical account—which he indeed does,
in wide-ranging, careful, and generally sympathetic fashion—Halkin makes
an effort to sprinkle throughout his story an interpretation of the Talmudic, Mishnaic, and other accounts of various features of the afterlife. He is
particularly sensitive to the human needs—primordial, psychological, and
particularly moral—that can be met (and indeed seem to be met only) in the
fully developed traditional Jewish view of the afterlife.
In his brief canvassing of several ancient (non-Jewish) accounts of death
and the afterlife, Halkin suggests that a belief in the afterlife was more or
less universal—implicitly rejecting Nietzsche’s claim that “priests” of various
stripes concocted and imposed on humanity the notion of the afterlife (or
the “after-worldly”). In its infancy, the afterlife was routinely understood as a
somewhat mysterious but rather “grim” place (11). (Indeed: despite glancing
at Homer’s depiction of Hades in the Odyssey, Halkin fails to report Achilles’s
fierce condemnation of that afterlife, filled as it is with “senseless” shades—
which, had he known then what he knows now, would certainly have made
him cling to life under even the most unvirtuous and demeaning circumstances.) Halkin focuses here on the most primitive Jewish concept of the
afterlife, She’ol. It seems like nothing so much as the “dreamless sleep” that
Socrates conjures in Plato’s Apology. For, as Halkin comments, She’ol was
“not a place of reward and punishment; all its inhabitants are treated equally”
(15). Or rather, it was a place of punishment simply, death itself being the
original punishment (for Adam and Eve’s sin in Eden: 16).
The failure of death thus understood to discriminate between good and
evil individuals proved intolerable. Halkin seems to present morality itself as
the first innovation that had to be created in the face of death: so menacing
was the thought of a simple expiration of life, humans could not but wish for
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some form of extension of life. And, given its character as manifestly contravening the somber necessity of death’s apparent finality, the afterlife would
have to be seen as something deserved, something to be earned somehow.
The manner of earning it, of course, proved to be morality, understood as
fulfilling God’s will in light of the fact that “all His ways are just” (161, quoting Deut. 32:4).
Halkin is at his most fascinating in sketching the evolution of the meaning
of the afterlife as a consequence of our morality. For there is a grave problem
connected with the notion of rewarding morality. If an act is undertaken for
a (personal) reward—and not for its own sake or, more particularly, for the
sake of God—then it is hard to see how it can still be considered a moral act.
Any action undertaken to secure for myself a portion in the world to come
can be considered only an ante of sorts, a price to be paid for a much-desired
outcome. Judaism’s initial response is to dissociate my reward from me personally. As Halkin notes, while the demand that the Commandments be observed
is placed on every Jewish individual (the singular “you” being employed
throughout the relevant places in Deuteronomy), the “consequences” or “benefits” will be enjoyed only “in the aggregate” (Deuteronomy shifting to the
plural “you” for those) (25). I behave morally, that is, so that my progeny—be it
my flesh and blood or the Jewish people altogether—may prosper.
The purity of such self-sacrifice, however, proved an insufficient compensation: “it wasn’t enough” (26). (It may not even have been quite so pure: the
continuation of my people is the essential ground for me being remembered.)
As the “old homogeneous, cohesive Israelite society” gave way to the new,
more urban, more dispersed, and more anonymous “Jewish” one, it became
harder and harder to envision, with any degree of certainty, that one “would
have anything in common with [one’s] own progeny” (28). That posthumous
reward for my good deeds having been rendered uncertain, I would now have
to seek their effects “in the course of my own life” (29). The afterlife, then,
seemed to require additional elaboration as individualism—a concern with
one’s “own separate fate”—emerged (56). And yet, as Kohelet (Ecclesiastes)
points out—paraphrasing loosely—bad things happen to good people no less
than to bad. In words almost identical to those used by Achilles when justifying his temporary withdrawal from the Trojan War, Solomon notes “one end
awaits them all” (Eccles. 3:16–19; cf. Iliad 9.318–19). Halkin identifies three
possible ways forward: reincarnation (the belief held by the atypical Philo),
bodily resurrection in this world, or an afterlife in which one receives “his
just deserts” (31–33).
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Though all three play a role in classical Judaism, Halkin focuses chiefly
on the ways in which the dominant alternative—the afterlife—was conceived
(the last group to have been “afterlife skeptics” seem to have been the Sadducees who, Halkin observes, “could afford to be” insofar as they were wealthy
and powerful and hence unique in their capacity to enjoy this world: 41).
What effect did the afterlife have on this life? Unlike certain “mystical” religions, Judaism did not preach bodily abstinence. Rather, the soul’s task was
to elevate—to sanctify—the body (whose sole task often seemed to be to drag
the soul down). As a result, there was a sustained dispute over whether the
righteous would enjoy the afterlife in some kind of embodied state.
Those who argued that the soul retained a body in the world to come
were confronted with a series of practical questions, such as “which of the
many ages that I have been in this world will I be in the next one?” (61). On
the other hand, if the soul continues to exist without the body, how will it feel
or perceive (62)? Halkin turns to Rav’s contemporary Plotinus to illustrate
the Neoplatonist view—rejected by Rav—of the afterlife. (Neoplatonism,
for our purposes, consists of treating various Socratic hypotheses about the
afterlife presented in the Phaedo as though they were asserted truths.) Under
this assumption, the afterlife consists of “pure intellection” (64). But Rav (the
chief compiler of the Talmud) rejects both the projection of embodied souls
into the afterlife and the “philosophical” alternative of pure intellection. The
souls in paradise, according to the final Talmudic position, simply bathe in
God’s light.
Halkin here notes the fundamental connection between morality and
theology: souls admitted to paradise have “earned their place there by living
virtuously” (66). Here too a question arises. For if this is so, why should there
be a hell? Would not exclusion from paradise itself constitute a “natural”
punishment? To make sense of this, Halkin turns to the Talmudic Tractate
Rosh Hashanah. Not only does this tractate contain the most extensive treatment of hell in rabbinic literature, it may (in its connection to the holiday of
Rosh Hashanah) unlock the mystery of its function or purpose (70). On that
Day of Judgment, Jews are to consider the three relevant classes of people:
the wholly righteous, the wholly sinful, and the “intermediate.” While the
wholly sinful (including apostates and skeptics) descend to Gehenna (hell)
and remain there forever, the intermediate face one of three fates: go there,
quake for a year, then ascend (to paradise); go there and, after their bodies
disappear (in twelve months), their souls are “burned” and scattered (71);
or, as the merciful Hillel suggests, those whose good deeds balance their evil
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ones will be spared Gehenna altogether, while only those whose good deeds
are outweighed by their evil ones descend and have their souls scattered. That
is, while a ray of hope is held out to those who led “intermediate” lives on
earth, the truly sinful will be punished eternally (though not, apparently, on
the Sabbath: 76). Halkin might have pressed his original question here: does
not the insistence that some punishment exists beyond the mere failure to
enjoy a portion of the world to come reflect a certain doubt on the part of the
rabbis that bathing in God’s divine light for eternity is all that need be hoped
for? Does it not imply a suspicion that the wicked got away with something
here? And does not the relative quiet of the whole discussion of hell indicate
a certain embarrassment at the moral confusion its very existence might thus
seem to entail?
In perhaps the most important section of the book, Halkin contrasts the
philosophic and the antiphilosophic attitudes that have manifested themselves
in Judaism. He first considers Maimonides’s “more radical approach,” which
rejects “personal immortality” for all but perhaps those who have attained
“knowledge” (94–96). This brief but penetrating discussion contains the only
misreading of a source that I noted in the work. Despite noting that Maimonides argues “When the intellect comprehends a thing, [it is] not a thing
distinct from the thing comprehended,” Halkin then (in the good company
of many readers of the Guide) draws the mistaken inference that Maimonides
(like Plato) held that there were distinct “Ideas” that alone could be comprehended by the intellect (95, quoting Guide, 1.48). But to understand what a
thing is, for Maimonides, means understanding something of the character
that inheres within or defines it, not having recourse to some “metaphysical”
realm where the separate, disembodied “Ideas” abide. Wisdom, therefore, can
be attained in this world and need not be deferred to the world to come (as
part of its reward). Still, Halkin rightly concludes that, for Maimonides, “the
philosophically lived life. . . is its own recompense” just as the “life lived in
pursuit of material goods and pleasures. . . is its own retribution” (96).
It was the austere and “unrewarding” nature of Maimonides’s philosophical approach, Halkin suggests, that led to (greater interest in) the Zohar’s
more mystical approach, which ultimately constitutes a “rebellion against
philosophy” (102). Halkin underplays the importance of his own argument
here. For he here demonstrates that Jewish hostility to philosophy ultimately
stems not (as the rabbis from Talmudic times on have suggested) from its character as “epikourses” (the hedonism that Maimonides also rejects) but from its
failure to satisfy the longing for eternal life (at least for the nonphilosophers).
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Accordingly, the Zohar posits that the soul preexists this life and so can exist
after it parts with the body (103). This, we might note, marks a certain return
of Neoplatonism to Judaism.
The vast majority of the features of the afterlife are presented as being
designed to answer the questions “How can one be zocha (worthy) of a good
‘portion’ of the afterlife?” and “In what might a ‘good portion’ consist?” Yet
Halkin suggests, at the very end of his ruminations, that a response to a certain animal-like cry against the utter oblivion that death seems to decree on
us all may be the most fundamental human need of all. Rather than place
this cry in the mouth of some nobody (who might have good reason to fear
the afterlife and thus be open to the charge of special pleading), the Jewish
tradition (as Halkin points out) places this most pathetic cry (of “let me live
at any cost”) in the mouth of none other than Moses, surely the most morally worthy (in spite and because of his also being the most humble) of men.
Halkin offers a detailed discussion of the famous Midrash (Yalkut Shi’moni
on Deut. 31) recounting Moses’s extended bargaining with God so that he
might not die before entering the Promised Land (or, indeed, that he might
not die at all). Moses, we are told, first prayed repeatedly and so deftly and
movingly that God had to close the gates of heaven, lest the divine plan be
overturned. Moses then began “arguing” with God (210). Appealing to the
biblical injunction not to deny workers their due wages, Moses suggests he
has earned, through his unstinting leadership of the Israelites for forty years,
the chance to see the Promised Land. Silently accepting Moses’s premise (that
leading the Israelites was a sacrifice and not a goodly gift proffered by God),
God suggests He can hardly reward Moses in the hereafter if He rewards
him (to such an extent? at all?) now. Yet Moses would prefer life at almost
any cost to the hereafter, even when guaranteed by God. At this point, Moses
offers a series of ever more degrading transformations he would be willing to
undergo in order to stay alive: he would become a beast of the field or a bird
that flitters about. (This part of the argument seems to agree with the classical
Jewish teaching that “we” are our “souls,” our bodies being merely temporary clothing in this life.) This request denied, Moses (seemingly descending
one more rung) asks that his body (“this face,” “these legs,” “these arms”) be
rewarded and not be made “to lick the dust.” This request too being denied,
Moses responds to God’s decree that the time for Joshua’s leadership has
come with the plaintive offer that he become Joshua’s student. But just as
a transformation into a “beast” or a “bird” would render Moses no longer
Moses (and thus incapable of gaining the reward for which he had sacrificed),
so too would unlearning his profound wisdom (necessary to become Joshua’s
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student) render him no longer Moses. And God, perhaps not a little cruelly,
allows Moses to see this. He takes Moses up on his final offer, and sends him
to learn from Joshua. But Moses, to his great dismay, cannot understand. Or
rather, he cannot understand Joshua’s lessons. God’s lesson, with what seems
to be crushing weight and finality, is learned: Moses offers his life to God.
But, in fact, the lesson is still not learned! One after the other, Moses
frightens off the various angels (including ultimately the angel of death) sent
by God to end his life and bring him to God’s side. In the end, God Himself
must descend from heaven and convince Moses that he must now die. “None
of Judaism’s consolations,” Halkin observes, “mean a thing to him” (214). Yet,
while this is obviously so in one sense, is not something about Judaism’s relative downplaying of the afterlife integral to its far more favorable view of (this
worldly) life than most any other religion?
Of all the distinctions Halkin draws between the Jewish view of death and
those of other cultures, perhaps none is as striking and important as the Jewish
insistence on not “conceding to death too much” (22). That is, Jews are taught
always to love life and to insure that their response to death—and view of the
afterlife—never tempts them to “mortify the flesh” or even to welcome suicide
(as did many early Christians and some contemporary Muslims) as a quicker
and surer route to paradise. Halkin quotes Maimonides’s statement (from his
Laws of Mourning) that “a person should not go to too great lengths over his
dead” (133), a sentiment that would not be out of place in Plato’s “city in speech”
in the Republic. Perhaps this is connected to the fact that, with regard to the
afterlife, “the God of Israel was more merciful than the God of the Christians”
(115). For He seems to permit post-deathbed conversions, or rather, permits the
additional year of suffering in Gehenna as sufficient atonement prior to being
allowed after all into the world to come. (Halkin also discusses the postbiblical
innovation of saying Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, whose faithful recital by
the dead’s offspring can have a beneficial impact on the soul of the dead person.
In particular, our tears can ensure that the dead’s soul is judged by mercy and
not strict justice: 157). Life itself, with all its trials, is good for Jews, for it is only
there that one can become worthy of eternal life, by meeting and overcoming
those very trials. And it is only through worthiness, it seems, that one can earn
the eternal life one craves (116).
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Book Review: Brill’s Companion to Leo Strauss’ Writings on Classical Political Thought
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Timothy Burns, ed., Brill’s Companion to Leo Strauss’ Writings on Classical
Political Thought. Leiden: Brill, 2015, 480 pp., $ 222 (hardcover).
A n t o i n e P. S t - H i l a i r e
University of Ottawa, Ottawa
[email protected]
The recently published Brill’s Companion to Leo Strauss’ Writings on Classical
Political Thought is both a very useful and an engaging book. It can provide
a fruitful introduction to new readers of Leo Strauss, but it also addresses
difficult and substantial problems that arise in Strauss’s interpretations.
Hence this volume surely is an indispensable reading for every conscientious
student of the thought of Strauss—for Strauss’s thinking can be faithfully
summed up as a “tentative or experimental” (CM 11) attempt to recover classical political rationalism and most of his writings are indeed commentaries
on core texts of ancient political philosophy.
In the editor’s introduction, Timothy W. Burns summarizes Strauss’s
intellectual path by highlighting the key points of his critique of modernity
and attempt to recover ancient political thought. As any reader of Strauss
knows, what motivated such a return is the twofold contemporary threat to
the very possibility of philosophy, and hence of political philosophy: positivism and historicism. Since positivism, once examined, “transforms itself into
historicism” (WIPP 25), Burns is right to mainly address historicism. First,
he presents us with an account of Hegel’s philosophy of history (as the chief
representative of what can be called “rational historicism” [see, e.g., 153]).
He also makes clear that stricto sensu, the Hegelian view of history, since
it esteems itself the absolute standpoint and thus does not historicize itself,
is not historicism (10). But by “inventing” the historical consciousness (7),
Hegel prepared its radicalization—mainly through the German Historical
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School, which finally led to the oblivion of any transcendent truth outside
of history, that is, to historicism (11). But whereas the idea of an absolute
moment in history may seem fairly difficult to establish, historicism proper
struggles with an even more severe problem: if every truth must be confined
to its historical situation or epoch, should it not be that the epoch wherein
this broader “truth” was discovered is superior to the previous ones? Hence,
historicism dithers between the denial of any absolute moment and the need
of an absolute moment. According to Strauss, this confusion led to the rejection of “theory” (12, cf. NRH 26). Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s severe critiques
of philosophy in favor of a somehow poetic thinking are testimonies of this
contemporary crisis of modern rationalism. As Burns stresses, “modern
political philosophy” “began as an alternative to classical political philosophy
but ended up with a farewell to reason” (2). Hence, to recover reason meant in
one way or another to recover ancient philosophy.
Following the “unsuccessful” attempts of both Husserl and Heidegger,
Strauss aimed to recover in the ancients “the natural world” or “the prescientific world,” as opposed to the abstract consciousness characteristic of
modern science and philosophy (16). Since the classical philosophers thought
in a world that was not yet “infused” or altered by science (17), their writings
are able to display the emergence of the scientific or philosophic life from the
political and moral and religious life that constitutes the core of this natural
world. Hence, unlike most phenomenological inquiries into ancient thought,
Strauss’s recovery of classical thinkers is marked by the recovery of “political
philosophy, as a necessary ‘preliminary’ to philosophy proper” (3). Grounding
science or philosophy in the natural world, that is, in the city, means that
philosophical inquiry must take as its starting point the moral and political
opinions that constitute the prescientific realm. The philosopher founded the
philosophic life not, as Heidegger thought, on the grounds of a metaphysics of presence, but rather conceiving of it as following from the principle
of sufficient reason—ex nihilo nihil fit. But as Burns points out, “it remains
true that one cannot justify science or philosophy if its ‘presupposition,’ the
principle of sufficient reason or cause, is merely the result of a choice or decision, rather than demonstrated” (20). This amounts to saying that political
philosophy must examine these opinions: it must be dialectical (25). The philosopher who engages in such dialectical inquiry will recognize soon enough
that most of the sets of opinions that he encounters are self-contradictory or
lead to contradictions,1 and he will thus recognize in the very act of philo1
Hence, if the philosopher does not want to hold the principle of causality as self-evident, he can
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523
sophical dialogue that “his is the right path” (26). Strauss thence discovered
that political philosophy, as a politically immersed rational inquiry, was the
approach ancient philosophers took in order to establish the veracity of their
way of life, the way of a rational understanding of nature as an intelligible
whole, in contradistinction to the “theological” way of thinking and living.2
He most certainly thought that this dialectical way was a better way than the
modern critique of religion, which was practically powerful but theoretically
insufficient. Strauss was thus led by his intimate concern with the “theological-political problem” to examine ancient texts.
Brill’s Companion to Leo Strauss’ Writings on Classical Political Thought
offers its readers a series of essays that present and thoughtfully interpret
almost every one of Strauss’s writings on classical political philosophy.3 The
volume is divided into six parts: part 1 is dedicated to Strauss’s texts on preSocratic thought, part 2 to classical political philosophy in general, and parts
3–6 to Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, respectively. I cannot in
this review provide a sufficiently detailed account of each of the chapters. I will
rather attempt to sketch an outline of the main issues discussed in these essays.
1. The Problems of Pre-Socratic Thought
In chapter 1, Gregory A. McBrayer examines the third chapter of Natural
Right and History, “The Origin of the Idea of Natural Right.” By focusing on
the emergence of this Socratic Idea, Strauss, in fact, discusses the grounding
out of which the idea of natural right was possible, that is, the discovery of
nature (phusis). In fact, the idea of nature as a principle of intelligibility is
required if there is to be something like a natural right. The discovery of
nature, Strauss argues, proceeded from a twofold distinction: that “between
hearsay and seeing with one’s own eyes” and that between what was
demonstrate it only by relying on the principle of contradiction, and more generally on logic. Whereas
Burns correctly notes that Heidegger “avoids addressing” or implicitly rejects causality (20), one
may also note that he somehow rejects—or at least puts explicitly on hold—the principle of contradiction (and hence logic altogether, die allgemeine “Logik”) as well. See Martin Heidegger, Was ist
Metaphysik?, in Wegmarken, GA 9, 107. There seems to be here indeed a kind “farewell to reason.”
2
The question whether, according to Strauss, the political philosopher may ever succeed in moving
beyond political philosophy to “philosophy proper” is one that unfortunately remains unanswered,
both in the volume and in this review, but perhaps in Strauss’s writings too.
3
The following texts are not discussed: the chapter of Strauss’s What Is Political Philosophy? entitled
“On Classical Political Philosophy”; the last conference on “The Problem of Socrates” dedicated to
Plato and the Poets; the chapters of Xenophon’s Socrates on Xenophon’s Apology of Socrates to the Jury;
Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse (Strauss’s interpretation of the Oeconomicus); the review of W. P. Henry
on the Hellenika entitled “Greek Historians”; and Strauss’s published course on Plato’s Symposium.
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man-made and what was not (35; NRH 88). Hence, at first, the discovery
of nature stood in contradistinction, and even in opposition, to convention
(nomos). This state of things, however, leads to an apparent paradox, for the
discovery of nature that is required in order to discover natural right seems
to stand against the realm of human conventions, the realm of the political
in which things are said to be right or wrong.
In fact, this seeming disjunction between natural and man-made beings
led the pre-Socratic thinkers to look with contempt on conventions. The
standard of nature appeared so bright that it led to moral and political conventionalism, which is mutatis mutandis the ancient equivalent of modern
legal positivism: justice and injustice are nothing else than mere conventional
agreements between human beings (38–39). Even if he rejects it in the end,
Strauss recognizes the strength of the conventionalist doctrine. Indeed, in
the light of the stability and order of the whole of nature, our earthly standards of justice are very changeable. Yet the idea of natural right requires that
“the principles of right are not unchangeable” (39). But according to Strauss,
the variability of positive right is not sufficient to establish the impossibility
of natural right. Even this variability suggests that something permanent lies
behind or beyond it: as McBrayer puts it, “the perennial disagreements that
arise over the question of natural right reveal a genuine perplexity, a permanent or fundamental problem” (40, my emphasis). Is this to say that natural
right is a problem or a question? The fact that Strauss speaks of it in terms
of an “Idea” might allow us to think so (see, e.g., WIPP 39). Socratic natural
right would thus appear not as a dogmatic teaching on justice, but as openness to the possibility of a natural standard of justice beyond conventions.
The problem with the derivative political teaching of the pre-Socratics is
that they suppose that the city is a mere fiction. Since justice is inextricably
linked with the common good of the city, if the city is purely artificial, there
would be no natural right (40–41). Does this mean that Socratic philosophy,
by contrast, holds the city to be natural? Not exactly: Socrates does not know
if the city truly is natural, but neither does he presuppose that it is not natural.
There is, in fact, a tension in the writings of Socratic political philosophy concerning that very issue, a tension that Strauss’s commentaries often help to
bring up (cf. 45). This presupposition of pre-Socratic philosophy is embedded
in a deeper or broader presupposition. The artificial character of the political community was held by those thinkers in the light of a specific view of
nature. It would indeed seem that in order to assert the unnaturalness of the
political, one must know what are the principles of nature. The pre-Socratics
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assumed that they knew those principles (43), that they had replaced divine
providence with the true cosmological doctrines. The Socratic philosophical
attitude stands skeptical in the face of such assumption: Strauss indeed says
that Socrates did not presuppose any specific cosmology and that his knowledge of ignorance on this matter allowed him to “view man in the light of
the mysterious character of the whole” (WIPP 38–39). Such a view, McBrayer
writes, “does not presuppose the existence of eternal imperishable first principles and is not reductionist, insofar as it preserves the natural phenomena
by recognizing that the nature of a thing is the character of the class of being
to which that thing belongs as distinguished from the character of other
classes of beings” (43). This Socratic nondogmatic ontology, which Strauss
encapsulates in the name “noetic heterogeneity,” enables one to recognize the
peculiar character of being of human affairs or of political things (ta politika,
ta anthrōpina) without presupposing their naturalness or unnaturalness. By
doing so, Socrates opens the possibility of a genuine philosophizing, that is,
a rational inquiry in the light of the standard of nature or intelligibility, on
political affairs: he is the founder of political philosophy.
In his conclusion, McBrayer argues that “the origin of the idea of natural
right seems to be rooted in the human desire to defend justice when its existence has been called into doubt by the discovery of nature and the attendant
distinction between nature and convention” (47). Even if one might wonder
if this origin is not instead rooted in a desire to understand or to know justice rather than simply to defend it, this surely helps us understand why the
chief representatives of pre-Socratic thought discussed in Strauss’s works—and
in this volume—are historically a “co-Socratic” (Thucydides) and a “postSocratic” (Lucretius). Pre-Socratic philosophy is not a mere historical moment
of philosophy: “Socratic philosophizing” “is always in danger of being lost” by
falling either into the pitfall of the philosophic conventionalism (47) of preSocratic natural philosophy or into that of the prephilosophical natural attitude,
between which political philosophy stands in a very fragile equilibrium.
Chapter 2 deals with Strauss’s writings on Thucydides. But Thucydides
does not seem to fit with the aforementioned natural philosophers who show
only contempt for the realm of ta politika. In fact, Clifford Orwin notes at
the outset that “for the mature Strauss, it seems, any differences between
Thucydidean ‘history’ and Socratic ‘philosophy’ are outweighed by their
common commonsensicality” (53). Nevertheless, the political history of
Thucydides is said by Strauss to “supplement” pre-Socratic natural philosophy while Thucydides takes “his cosmic bearings from Heraclitus” (52). To
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address Thucydides as a pre-Socratic thus requires that one understand the
relationship between these cosmic bearings and political thought. Light is
shed on this relationship when one’s attention is drawn with Strauss to the
question of piety and the gods in Thucydides’s work.
Throughout Strauss’s commentaries on Thucydides, the dialectic between
rest and motion is a constant theme. Whereas the political philosopher such
as Plato or Aristotle presents us with the city “at rest,” Thucydides displays
the city, nay cities, “in motion.” His history offers a portrait of the greatest
war which is supposed to be understood as the biggest motion, but which
as such can arise only after the longest time of peace, the greatest rest. The
Peloponnesian War opposed Sparta and Athens, the former being the conservative city of moderation—the city at rest—and the latter being the daring
city of progress—the city in motion. What are these dialectical oppositions
supposed to mean? It looks as if Strauss enjoins us to seek the Thucydidean
understanding of nature in his appreciation of Sparta and Athens, that is, in
his interpretation of the war that opposed these two cities. Indeed, “the crucial
dualities of Thucydides’ work…are aspects of his teaching on nature” (57).
Sparta is the city of moderation and piety and those virtues provide to its
regime the stability required in order “to protect its own,” which, according
to Strauss, is the reason for Thucydides’s humane admiration for the Lacedemonians (56). But the fact that Sparta is a very pious political community
problematizes this admiration. For it would seem that the stability of this city
somehow stands on its being oriented toward something other than itself,
and this fact reveals the importance of the “fundamental orientation of the
polis toward the transpolitical” (57). As Orwin says, “this orientation would
be unproblematic (and simply favorable to Sparta) only if the character of the
transcendent were so” (57). The final appreciation of Sparta on Thucydides’s
part would thus depend on its view of God(s) or the divine law being the correct one. But his observations on the Lacedemonians’ attitude at war reveal
something paradoxical about their city: whereas their moderation and conservatism condemn “musical” education in favor of martial discipline, their
piety is the source of many military errors and failures. This Spartan paradox
indicates that there may be something misleading about their conception of
the divine law.
But this critique of Sparta does not lead Thucydides to an unqualified
praise of Athens. Even though he is himself “Thucydides the Athenian” and
esteems gratefully Athens’s way in culture and education, his historical work
shows quite uniquely the defects of Athenian daring. Whereas this daring
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bears fruit in a time of peace when it infuses and stimulates thinkers and
poets, it also comprises a tendency toward hubris, which finally led Athens, in
its imperial growth, to self-destruction (67–68). This Athenian tragedy suggests a punishment of this hubris. In other words, the Athenians were not
pious enough whereas the Spartans were too pious. In Sparta, the gods held
its citizen to strong limits; in Athens, the daring of the divine things led to the
fading away of any sense of limits.
This diagnosis leads Strauss to think that “for Thucydides, the pious
understanding…is true if for the wrong reasons: not the gods but nature sets
limits to what the city can attempt” (68). The divine law does not require
Spartan piety, nor does it allow Athenian hubris, but an awareness of the
limits that are brought about by “the divine law properly understood,” that
is, the natural “interplay of rest and motion” which as such “subsume[s] the
divine” (63, 58). Hence, the teaching of Thucydides about the gods is not really
interested in their existence but rather tries to show their political relevance
(73). But reduced to this cosmic teaching about motion and rest, as Orwin
points out, the divine law “is neither divine nor a law” properly speaking (73).
Hence Thucydides’s political theorizing seems to be constructed indeed on,
or to take its bearings from, some cosmic teaching. Even though the extent
to which these bearings are truly Heraclitean is not clear, it appears that the
Greek historian shares with the other pre-Socratics a purported knowledge of
a cosmological or “theological” kind (cf. 74).
In chapter 3, James H. Nichols discusses Strauss’s “Notes on Lucretius.”
Strauss’s main concern here again is the Epicurean critique of religion. Lucretius’s explicit claim is that such a critique helps one to get rid of the fear of
the gods (77). Such a fear can be overcome by a genuine knowledge of the
first causes in nature, by a truthful account of de rerum natura. Lucretius’s
and Epicurus’s atomist view is supposed to provide the knowledge that should
bring our human souls to be at peace, that is, that should repeal fear and
pain. However, Strauss notes that in aiming at a critique of religion, Lucretius
silences the fact that there might also be something comforting in the theological account of the world. The idea of divine creation implies that the world
is a closed, finite universe. The place of human beings in such a cosmos is, if not
easy to discover, ultimately determinable. The limitedness of the world allows
thinking it as an ordered world. Order is more comforting than chaos (87).
However, Lucretius’s physiology stipulates the infinity of the universe.
Once he grasps this truth, man starts to hear the “crackings of the walls of the
world.” He also understands that his own being, including the human soul,
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is but a specific configuration of moving atoms. Man, his soul, and even the
gods are all made of atoms and hence perishable (90). Only the first principles,
the atoms, are eternal. And as such, they follow no direction. The teaching
that is supposed to provide the pleasure of serenity is perhaps more likely to
breed angst and despair. Even if the idea of punishing gods can be a fearful
one, the providential care that it supposes can also satisfy the human aspiration for justice. How then is Lucretius’s harsh view of nature compatible with
his hedonic view of the good life?
In order to understand that question, one must note with Strauss that De
rerum natura is a work of philosophy and poetry: “However sad the truth may
be, to be the first who speaks about the sad truth in charming verses is not
sad” (86). The harsh teaching may be pleasant to some degree if it is “sweetened” by poetry. Hence, Lucretius surpasses Epicurus since he understands
the truth but also understands the proper way to reveal it (92). By doing so,
he shows that he understands the human soul (93), and more precisely the
difference between the types of human souls: the bitterness of Epicureanism
must be harsher for some, and easier to accept for others. One may think that
for the nonphilosopher, Lucretius’s teaching must be sweetened since it is in
some respects “much harsher than the teaching of religion” (91), but that for
the Epicurean philosophers, Lucretius’s poetry only adds to the pleasure of
understanding. This implicit difference between philosophers and nonphilosophers in Strauss’s account of Lucretius seems to imply that the only true
hedonism is the philosophic life. Given this difference and its corresponding
poetic rhetoric, one is inclined to think that there is something of the Platonic way of philosophizing in Lucretius. At first sight, though, one must note
that he is communicating a teaching that claims to be the final and complete
truth, which seems incompatible with Socrates’s refusal to commit to any
specific cosmology or theology. In this respect and despite being historically
a post-Socratic, Lucretius is indeed a pre-Socratic philosopher.
However, Nichols’s careful reading helps us to see that Strauss is not
absolutely certain about that: the latter “notes occasional Lucretian sayings
that suggest that he might not be the simply Epicurean dogmatist that he
seems, for he is still seeking truth abut nature” (93). This suggests that Strauss
might see a greater community of mind than a break between Socratic and
pre-Socratic philosophy. Perhaps he thinks that if we are able to look behind
their apparent doctrines, we will meet genuine philosophical souls.4
Heinrich Meier, for instance, argues that according to Strauss, these doctrines are ultimately exoteric teachings relatively unimportant compared to their authentic and inexhaustible philosophical
4
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2. Recovering Classical Political Philosophy
The next section of the Companion offers a portrait of classical political philosophy. Since this expression in Strauss’s work is often equivalent to “ancient
political philosophy,” Timothy Burns introduces us in chapter 4 to one of
Strauss’s essays that covers most broadly this theme. “The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy,” a critical review of Havelock’s The Liberal Temper
in Greek Politics, deals with Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, and Antiphon.
Strauss’s severe critique of Havelock enables us to see his own understanding
of the unity of ancient political thought. Havelock’s very “poor scholarship”
aims at making ancient authors modern liberals and by doing so, blurs the
fundamental differences between the ancients and the moderns. In Burns’s
summary, according to Strauss pre-Socratics and Socratics alike share “the
recognition of the need to show that first things (whatever they might be)
are not gods; recognition of the antithesis of nature and nomos; recognition
of the deceptive character of the ‘world’ of nomos; and recognition of the
crucial philosophic need to accept one’s mortality and that of all human
accomplishment” (125). To recover classical political philosophy requires
that one liberate oneself from the blinding and naive modern idea of progress (or any other version of historicism) and to examine the possibility that
the aforementioned ancient roots of philosophy are the healthy ones. For
Strauss, those are indeed the only ones on the basis of which philosophic
activity can arise as something truly different from the (modern) sophistic
subordination of knowledge to practical political purposes.
Chapter 5 examines Strauss’s attempt to display such a political philosophizing in the chapter of Natural Right and History entitled “Classic Natural
Right.” Devin Stauffer first stresses the importance of the Socratic turn, for
Strauss argues that grasping the natural articulation of the whole in terms of
noetic heterogeneity “permitted and favored the study of the human things as
such” (134–35). It permitted it by acknowledging that the human things are
different in kind from other natural beings or divine beings, and it favored
it by recognizing that this articulation of the whole is necessarily one that is
mediated by men: an inquiry into ta anthrōpina is meant to examine to what
extent and under what conditions our access to truth is distorted or not. The
Socratic turn acknowledges that our articulation of the whole is mediated by
the polis, by the prevailing opinions, and thus requires dialectical examination (135–36).
inquiries. See, e.g., Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, trans. Marcus
Brainard (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 72–73.
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This dialectical examination rejects the pre-Socratic conventionalism
discussed above and tries instead to uncover the nature of the political community. In order to do so, the Socratics rejected the supposition of political
and cultural relativism and questioned the variety of political associations by
raising the question of the best regime (139). Their answer to this question
was twofold. The best regime according to the classics is aristocracy, that is,
the rule of the best men. Therefore, in the first place, the best regime is the
rule of the wise. But ancient political thinkers knew that this regime was
impractical. This brought them to think that the best regime in practice must
be the second-best or a mixed regime, that is, the rule of the gentlemen (139).
However, this dilution of natural right into the mixed regime reveals what
Strauss calls “the problem of justice.” For the twofold answer to the question of the regime is also an implicit answer to the question of justice. The
mixed regime implies that justice is, as the gentlemen hold it, “identical with
citizen-morality” (141). But the dialectical inquiry through which natural
right is supposed to be grounded easily puts into question the assumption
that moral virtue is the highest goal: the philosopher in his dialectical ascent
may very well think of civic virtues as “mere means to a life devoted to the
pursuit of wisdom” (143). The problem of justice is the tension between justice understood as the moral and civic virtues and justice understood as a
question, which directs oneself to a philosophic way of life. But to this latter
understanding, natural right is “dynamite for civil society” (144). The necessity of the dilution of natural right both indicates the opposition between
philosophy and politics and the need to assuage that opposition in practice.
Strauss’s provocative interpretation asserts that such is the Socratic teaching
endorsed by Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero alike.
According to Strauss, among the classics, only the Thomistic teaching
on natural law stands apart from that view. The main difference, it seems, is
that for Aquinas, natural law depends on the divine law, as revealed by the
scriptures, whereas Socratic natural right is independent of any cosmological
doctrine, and in particular of such a thing as biblical revelation (144–45). The
difference amounts to the opposition between faith and rational skepticism,
or to the theological-political problem. One must note that strictly speaking, Strauss’s writings do not consider Thomas as a representative of classical
natural right.
In chapter 6, Jonathan F. Culp examines two other book reviews written
by Strauss with the aim of showing further obstacles to a genuine recovery
of the ancients. “On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History” shows the flaw of
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a rationalist historicism that considers ancient thought from the (allegedly
superior) standpoint of modernity (151). This, as Culp and Strauss stress, will
inevitably distort the teachings of the ancients and make one “necessarily
understand them differently than they understood themselves” (153). But the
reverse attitude is as problematic. In “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy,” Culp explains, Strauss shows that “too much eagerness…in
favor of the ancients” can lead to direct applications of ancient thought to our
contemporary situation, a transposition that could entail “disastrous consequences” (154). This point is crucial, for some critiques of Strauss have held
that his return to the ancients was of that naive kind. Strauss, Culp clarifies,
did not take the solutions of classical thinkers—if there are any—as answers
to our modern questions: “We must suspend our own questions in order to
discover what questions the classics posed, and we must be open to the possibility that our own questions ought to be discarded in favour of those asked
by the ancients” (165, my emphasis). As the reader of the Companion shall
see, Strauss’s investigations in the works of classical thinkers—Aristophanes,
Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle—are by far more sensitive to the questions
and problems than to answers or solutions.
3. Socratics
3.1. Aristophanes
Chapter 7, written by Christopher Baldwin, deals with Strauss’s complex
and subtle treatment of Aristophanes. In doing so, he highlights the quarrel
between philosophy and poetry. At first, Strauss leads his readers to believe
that he considers this quarrel to be an opposition that can find a resolution
only in the subordination of poetry to philosophy. Baldwin helps us see that
the issue is far more complex. Aristophanes’s Clouds appears in Strauss’s reading not so much as an attack against Socrates as friendly advice (see 171). The
Socratic turn to political philosophy would represent Socrates’s acknowledgment of that advice: an exhortation of philosophy to self-knowledge, which
requires an awareness of the political situatedness of the philosopher and the
consequent need for prudence and moderation throughout its inquiry. But
not only is Socrates receptive to that lesson. Aristophanes, in Strauss’s eyes,
explores in his plays the most Platonic questions, such as the question of
justice, the relationship between the individual and the community, and the
problem of the gods. He even seems to share the Socratic-Platonic insights
about those issues. At one point, Baldwin suggests that Aristophanes’s laugh
might be a comic image of the pure pleasure of understanding the nature
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of things through comedy (see 176 and RCPR 115). Strauss ultimately would
prompt us to see Aristophanes as a “kindred spirit who largely, but perhaps
not entirely agreed with his Socrates” (187). Unfortunately, Baldwin does not
clearly indicate what would be their slight disagreement, but one is perhaps
permitted to think that the Platonic philosophical stance may be superior
both to the tragic and comic view in light of the inherent tensions and problems of human life.
3.2. Xenophon
The longest section of the Companion is dedicated to Strauss’s numerous
works on Xenophon. It contains chapters on “The Problem of Socrates,”
Strauss’s reading of the Constitution of the Lacedemonians (Richard S. Ruderman), on Strauss’s On Tyranny (Eric Buzzetti), and on his interpretations of
the Symposium (Dustin Gish), the Memorabilia (Amy L. Bonnette), and the
Anabasis (Devin Stauffer, Timothy W. Burns).
The key to Strauss’s reading, Ruderman argues, is that “Xenophon’s shallowness, upon examination, turns out to be strategic or ironic in nature”
(195). Hence, Xenophon’s apparent apology of Socrates as a gentleman who
above all promoted the practice of moral and civic virtues is but a distortion
or an adornment of a more subversive philosophical activity: “Socrates was
not ‘unqualifiedly just’” (203). Ruderman’s most thought-provoking insight,
though, is that by arguing in favor of noetic heterogeneity, Xenophon’s
Socrates provided Strauss with a “response to Heidegger,” as resistance to the
“temptation of finding a single thing” (such as Being) “that compromised
a unified answer to the question ‘what is’” (206). Moreover, Strauss’s Xenophontic Socrates thought that politics was the matrix of our understanding
of such heterogeneity among beings, the reason why a thorough investigation
of the human affairs, that is, political philosophy, is the necessary primary
step of philosophy (see 208, 212). As for Strauss’s text entitled “The Spirit of
Sparta or the Taste of Xenophon,” Ruderman stresses how important it is that
the “or” be understood as disjunctive. Ironically praising Sparta, Xenophon
would in fact show to the attentive reader his taste for a philosophical way of
life that is altogether incompatible with martial and authoritarian regimes
(214–15). The taste of Xenophon—and, one may add, the taste of Strauss—is
one of moderation, for political moderation is essential to philosophy.
Eric Buzzetti introduces us to On Tyranny through the “problem of the
Law.” Although Simonides and Hiero are two very different men, they have
something in common: the poet and the tyrant are not gentlemen, and they do
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not consider that the gentleman’s moral and political horizon is the right one
(see 241). Buzzetti asserts that “the subject of the Hiero” might be “the rejection of the gentleman, or what the gentleman stands for” (137). The gentlemen
abide by the rule of law. The tyrant, on the contrary, deems himself above the
law and replaces it by his own will. As such, tyranny is a far worse rule than
the rule of gentlemen, but a certain “praise of tyranny, of tyranny at its best”
could perhaps “point to the limits of law” (248). Strauss’s analysis of the regime
in On Tyranny reveals that the criterion of the good regime is virtue, and that
true virtue or “philosophic gentlemanliness” such as Socrates’s is possible even
under a tyrannical rule, and hence “genuine virtue is not based upon law”
(249). The teaching concerning tyranny hence is fairly similar to the lesson
of Plato’s Republic: the best regime is the rule of philosophers above law, but
such a rule is extremely improbable, if not impossible. This teaching, however,
brings its student right in the midst of a problem, that is, the tension between
the private philosophic life and the political life. As Buzzetti notes, however,
Strauss is as discreet or silent as Xenophon on the tyrannical (or “translegal”)
dimension of the teaching on the regime. This exoteric rhetoric has a twofold
reason: political prudence, for this theme is indeed a very “delicate subjectmatter,” but perhaps more importantly a “pedagogic intention” (254) that
would encourage the readers of On Tyranny to think for themselves, for such
is the genuine path toward philosophy.
Dustin Gish focuses on the importance of Socrates’s esoteric rhetoric in
Strauss’s commentary on the Symposium in order to reveal the hidden display
of Socratic gentlemanliness (e.g. 269). The most memorable deed of this symposium, Gish argues, is the passage of the unique mutual laughter of Socrates
and the other gentlemen. This deed is exemplary of Socratic wisdom for it
raises the question of the cause or causes of this laughter: the common laughter conceals the different reasons for laughing, which point to the fact that
Socrates is different from ordinary gentlemen (see 277). By pointing subtly
to this crucial difference, Gish says, Xenophon makes us wonder “about the
hidden thought of Socrates” (279). The fundamental deed of Socrates among
gentlemen is thus his use of a rhetoric that reveals in a glimpse the activity of
philosophy at the same time as it very prudently conceals it (283).
Amy Bonnette’s introduction to Strauss’s interpretation of the Memorabilia is almost as cryptic as Strauss’s own text. One of the main concerns of
this essay is to consider whether, according to Xenophon, “Socrates did not
provide his unjust enemies with a motive for attacking him” (289). Moving
painstakingly through Strauss’s paraphrastic commentary, Bonnette seems
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to some extent a critic of his suggestions (see, e.g., 285, 293n9, 297n12) and
concludes on the following aporetic tone: Strauss “suggests that Socrates fell
short of manliness because he did not surpass his enemies in harming them”
without resolving “the problem of Socrates’ failure in self-defense” (300).
This problem, however, is central to the subsequent essays on Strauss’s
interpretations of Xenophon’s Anabasis. There, Devin Stauffer discusses
more extensively the issue at stake in this question: the difference between
Xenophon and Socrates. As Bonnette already suggested, that difference has
something to do with thumos. However, Xenophon was a Socratic and hence
was aware of the shortcomings of an altogether thumotic soul. Stauffer hence
tentatively but beautifully puts it thus: “in Homeric terms, Xenophon was no
Achilles; he was much closer to Odysseus” (308). He was somehow a man of
action with both deep philosophical insights and Socratic prudence. Indeed,
Xenophon may have been not entirely satisfied with the Socratic life as a
whole. Hence, he “quietly presents himself as an alternative to Socrates, as a
man for whom it was not true that his deed, as distinguished from his speech
and his thought, is nothing but playful” (312). In the next chapter, Timothy
Burns explores further this distinction in the light of the question of divine
justice in the Anabasis. Xenophon’s piety is ambiguous: it shows that he recognizes the human need for a divine support of justice, but that he is doubtful
that there is such divine providence. Strauss indeed says that Xenophon’s
piety is similar to a “combination of toughness, wittiness, and wiliness” (316).
Turning from the theme of divine justice to justice simply, Burns notes that
Strauss identifies Xenophon’s justice as standing between the views of the
older Cyrus and Socrates (317). It would seem that by contrast to Cyrus’s
justice, which is completely bound to one’s own political horizon, Socrates’s
view that the just life is the philosophic life is absolutely transpolitical (and
as such avoids the need to harm anyone). Xenophon is Socratic in the sense
that he betrays his Greek roots for something that he esteems “more highly
than Greece” (319). Fidelity to one’s own fatherland ultimately breeds contradictions and hence is “in practice impossible” (319). But, one may think,
Xenophon’s justice is also like Cyrus’s since the will to found a city implies
that justice is bound to the political.
3.3. Plato
The next section of the Companion deals with Strauss’s writings on Plato’s
Republic (Linda R. Rabieh), Minos (Robert Goldberg), Euthyphro (Wayne
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Ambler), Euthydemos (Michael Rosano), the Apology and Crito (John C.
Koritansky), and Laws (Mark J. Lutz).
Following up on the issue of Xenophon’s foundation of a city in the
Anabasis, Rabieh discusses Strauss’s interpretation of the Republic. The essay
focuses on the utmost importance of Thrasymachus to the action (ergon) of
the dialogue, which is essential to shed light on its argument (logos). Strauss’s
reading shows that the discussion of Socrates with Thrasymachus at first is
an opposition between the philosopher and the thesis of the city (326–30),
but that it transforms progressively toward the need of the rule of the philosophers. Hence, Thrasymachus appears as “Socrates’ potential ally” (330)
for the establishment of the philosopher-kings will require the use of a very
persuasive rhetoric (338). The “politics” of the Republic appears not as the
foundation of the beautiful city (kallipolis) but as the taming of Thrasymachus, which represents a successful “political defense of philosophy,” an act
of justice (343).
Strauss’s essay on the Minos is dedicated, as Goldberg shows, to the
relationship between the questions “what is Law ?” and quid sit deus. The
reason the question of law is “the gravest” one is that it inevitably relates to
the authority that prompts the goodness of the law. The ultimate problem is
that the laws that are said to be of divine origin do not correspond to what a
law is supposed to do, that is, to assign “each man’s soul the food and toil best
fitted for him” (353), putting immediately into question their divine character
or origin. When examined, the divine laws “reveal not the gods but those
human beings who need them” (355). But what is a good law, then? According to the preceding definition, a good law would be based on a knowledge
of the soul. The problem is that Socratic inquiry does not provide us with
such knowledge, and hence “Socrates’ definition of law implies the view that
law can never be more than the attempt to find out what is” (357): law, under
the light of Socratic examination, becomes philosophy. The question of law
places philosophy above “laws understood as morally binding commands”
(358), in the sole path of questioning. And such a questioning cannot help but
raise the question “what is?” and hence quid sit deus.5
Strauss looks at the treatment of that question in his discussion of piety in
the Euthyphro, examined by Wayne Ambler. According to Strauss, Socrates
shows here an attempt to replace the gods by the Ideas (362, 372, 378). The
On “what is a god?” being the “primary and most important” application of the question “what
is?” consider Strauss’s letter to Seth Benardete on May 17, 1961, quoted in Meier, Leo Strauss and the
Theologico-Political Problem, 27n42.
5
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incoherence of Euthyphro’s views is meant to make one progress toward a
more coherent articulation of the first principles. First, Euthyphro does not
show obedience to the gods, but an imitation of them, that is, of what they do
(371). Facing the problem of the contradictions between the gods, he chose
to imitate Zeus in harming his own father (372). But in choosing Zeus as
the most just god, Euthyphro implicitly supposes that there is a standard of
justice apart from the gods, an “idea,” which Zeus himself merely imitates
(372). Ambler then looks at the monotheist solution to this problem. Strauss
thinks that “even a single god would have to be understood as being ‘good
or just or wise,’” implying again the existence of Ideas prior to God himself
(373). Hence, true piety is “imitation, not obedience” “to the ideas as guiding
the choice of whom or what to imitate” (375). This leads one to think that
Socratic piety is or is very similar to Socratic philosophy.
Michael Rosano introduces Strauss’s reading of the Euthydemos. The key
to Strauss’s interpretation here is to remember that Socrates is telling a story
to Crito. Roughly, this story is a praise of Euthydemos and Dionysodoros’s
sophistic exhortation to virtue. In this praise, Socrates is ironic with Crito,
for Crito is “not an erotic man” and “remains in the dark regarding philosophy” (380, 389). Since the two brothers and Socrates stand above mere moral
or civic virtues (393), and more importantly since “many sophistic arguments imply Socratic questions” (394), Socrates is akin to them and perhaps
sees a possibility of turning their eristics into philosophical dialectics (398).
Crito clearly does not see this possibility, and hence declines Socrates’s ironic
invitation to join him and to study with the two brothers. Such reticence
is a reflection of the difficulty—especially from an outside standpoint like
Crito’s—to distinguish between Socratic philosophy and sophistry. This difficulty prefigures Socrates’s trial.
Strauss’s treatment of this trial is an aim to reveal that there was something truly subversive in Socrates’s way of life. As Koritansky puts it, “what
Socrates means by piety is not identical to ordinary piety” (407): by putting
into question the Delphic oracle, for instance, he shows a questioning rather
than obedient stance toward the divine (406). Plus, Socrates adopted an
arrogant and provocative attitude during his trial, which could not help him
out. Especially in his second speech, he is “uncompromising” and seems to
prompt his death sentence (see 412–13). Facing Crito’s despair at the prospect
of losing his old friend, Socrates speaks to him as if he were Athens’s Laws.
The general argument is not very cogent but it is meant to convince Crito,
who was willing to do something illegal, that he should abide by the law of
Book Review: Brill’s Companion to Leo Strauss’ Writings on Classical Political Thought
537
his city. If Socrates would accept Crito’s plan, Koritansky correctly notes, it
would endanger the reputation of philosophy; by being instead a “righteous”
“martyr of philosophy,” Socrates will cause Crito to carry a good image of
the philosopher. Socrates’s argument with Crito has a political purpose, not a
philosophic one (421–22).
But despite this prudent decision of Socrates, it seems that Plato could
not help but imagine what it would have been like if Socrates did follow
Crito’s plan and leave Athens to philosophize elsewhere: Plato wrote the
Laws, in which an “Athenian stranger” founds a city where the legislation
concerning piety seems to make room for the Socratic kind of piety (426). But
apart from this political dimension of the Laws (425), the dialogue includes
what is according to Strauss a deeply philosophical part: the Laws is the dialogue in which the question quit sit deus is treated to the greatest extent. The
“theology” of the Laws, however, implicitly rejects providential justice and
traditional polytheism. As Mark Lutz writes, Plato’s piety, perhaps by contrast with Socrates’s, is one that “corrects, without undermining, the piety
of men like Kleinias and Megillus” while bringing “to light the Athenian
Stranger’s rational piety” (440).
3.4. Aristotle
The last chapter of the book is devoted to Strauss’s rarely discussed interpretation of Aristotle. Susan D. Collins first retraces the crisis of the West
described by Strauss that prompts the need to return to Aristotelian political science. Recovering Aristotle is crucial, for Aristotle’s political science
does not presuppose the scientific modification of our understanding of the
political things but rather starts from the “common sense view” which is the
genuine “basis or matrix” of any scientific understanding (453). But Strauss
goes one step further in that direction when he affirms that “unlike Socrates,
Aristotle establishes political science as a discipline independent of theoretical wisdom” (456). He clarifies this affirmation by saying that in Aristotle,
political science is one discipline among many and that it has “its own
guiding principles,” that is, “prudence united with moral virtue” (456). This
differentiates Aristotelian political science from Socratic political philosophy.
Strauss, Collins notes, thinks that this difference is made possible by the
fact that Aristotle “presuppose[s] or posit[s] independent and knowable ‘first
principles,’ practical and theoretical, that ground the separate disciplines”
(459). This apparent difference between a zetetic or dogmatic approach to
the first principles would be reflected in the difference between the writing
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of treatises and the writing of dialogues (459). Strauss even pushes further
this distinction in order to indicate a continuation between Aristotle’s philosophical intention and modernity: this sort of epistemological “optimism” or
confidence (466), presumably compared to Socratic knowledge of ignorance,
would have somehow prepared the project of modern political science. The
moderns shared Aristotle’s optimism concerning knowledge and its relation
to happiness but did not think that nature, as it is, was sufficient for such
happiness.6 By tracing the roots of modernity in the association of Aristotelian thought and biblical revelation (466–68), and by presenting Aristotelian
metaphysics as a fertile ground for Christianity, Strauss leads one to wonder if
he really thinks of Aristotelian political science as a desirable object of recovery or if it is only meant as a path towards the Socratic roots of philosophy.
Conclusion
Many more questions, themes, and details than what I have sketched here are
discussed in this thorough volume. One flaw, if there is any, is that although
Strauss’s understanding of noetic heterogeneity is deeply and many times
discussed, the Platonic theory of the Ideas, albeit mentioned and referred
to in the context of the Euthyphro, is not examined. Since there might be
here a very difficult though profoundly important theme, the reader may be
dissatisfied with such absence. One might also regret that Strauss’s complex
interpretation of the relationship of continuity and discontinuity between
Plato and Aristotle is but briefly alluded to in the last chapter—but doing otherwise would perhaps have required a thematic rather than textual approach
to Strauss’s writings on the ancients.
In sum, the reader of Brill’s Companion to Leo Strauss’ Writings on Classical Political Thought will learn a great deal about Strauss’s thought and
will also certainly stimulate his own thinking about and with the ancient
thinkers. The authors of this important book have offered to every reader of
Strauss, and perhaps more importantly to students of Lucretius, Thucydides,
Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, a precious gift.7
See Catherine Zuckert and Michael Zuckert, Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 163.
6
7
This research was supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Société et Culture (FRQSC).
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